Paul Lynch is an Irish author born in Limerick, and currently living in Dublin. He has published five novels and won several awards, including the 2018 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and the 2023 Booker Prize, for Prophet Song.

He was born in Limerick in 1977; his parents and extended family are from Limerick city and county. When he was nine months old the family moved to the north of County Donegal, where he was raised. They settled in northern Inishowen, a peninsula on the Ulster coastline, and Lynch spent his childhood and teenage years at Malin Head and later in Carndonagh. The move was prompted by his father's job with the Coast and Cliff Rescue Service, which became the Irish Marine Emergency Service in 1991 and is now the Irish Coast Guard. His mother was an adult literacy teacher, and he is the eldest of three children.

He has not lived in County Donegal since 1995. He read English and Philosophy at University College Dublin but did not graduate. A longtime Dublin resident, he was formerly deputy chief sub-editor and chief film critic for The Sunday Tribune before turning to fiction.