Pat O’Connor lives in Limerick in the southwest of Ireland. He was a joint winner of the 2009 Best Start Short Story Competition in Glimmertrain, and in 2010 he was shortlisted for the Sean O’Faolain International Short Story Prize.

In 2011, he was shortlisted for the RTE Francis MacManus Award for radio stories, and won the Sean O’Faolain Prize. In 2012 he was shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award and the Fish Short Story prize. In 2013 he was longlisted for Over the Edge New Writer of the Year, and in 2014 for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award.

His stories have been published in Southword, Revival, Crannog, The Penny Dreadful, the Irish Independent, the Irish Times, Pure Slush (Australia), anthologized by the Munster Literary Centre, and broadcast on RTE.

His radio play This Time it’s Different, was broadcast on 95fm as part of the Limerick City of Culture program.

In autumn 2014, he was one of eight International Writers in Residence in Tianjin, China.

His story Advice and Sandwiches was included in the 2015 Anthology of Hennessy New Irish Writing, published by New Island.

His short story collection People In My Brain was published in November 2019.