Faculty and Visiting Writers
June 2005

Desmond Egan, an internationally acclaimed poet, has published over 20 collections of poetry, prose, and translations. He has been the recipient of the Chicago Haymarket Literary Award, The Farrell Prize, Pilgrim’s Progress Prize, The Bologna Literary Award, and the Macedonian Poetry Prize. His poem, “Peace,” was translated into 21 languages as part of a celebration of Peace for the Millennium. He is in high demand as a guest lecturer, and has traveled the globe to perform readings, including a stop at Carlow University in March 2005. He is also the artistic director and founder of the Gerard Manley Hopkins Summer School, the best literary festival in Ireland. He is the mentor for MFA poetry students.

Anne Enright is considered to be the hottest young writer in Ireland today. She is a fresh new voice in fiction and nonfiction. What Are You Like? was a finalist for the Whitbread Award. She is also the author of The Wig My Father Wore. Her work has received glowing praise in Ireland and the U.S. She was a winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, given for the past 25 years in Ireland to an exciting writer under the age of 40. She has published in The New Yorker, Granta, and The Paris Review. She is the mentor for MFA creative nonfiction students.

Mary O’ Donnell publishes cross-genre. She has written four collections of poetry, and is translated into French, Rumanian, and Chinese. She has received many awards from the Irish Times. Her fiction includes the best-selling literary novel The Light-Makers, the highly acclaimed Virgin and the Boy, and, more recently, ‘Canticles’. Her poems, essays, and translations have appeared in literary magazines and journals throughout Ireland, the United States, and U.K. She was a member of the faculty at the University of Iowa’s Summer Writing Program and has been writer-in-residence and teacher of creative writing for post-graduate students at University College Dublin. She is the mentor for the MFA fiction students.

Pat Boran is the program director of the Dublin Writers Festival and publisher of Dedalus Press. He has published four full-length collections of poetry, The Unwound Clock, winner of the 1989 Patrick Kavanagh Award, Familiar Things, The Shape of Water, and As the Hand, the Glove. His first short fiction for children, All the Way from China, was shortlisted for the Bistro Book of the Year Award. His nonfiction work includes The Portable Creative Writing Workshop and A Short History of Dublin. His critical reviews of other works have been published in The Irish Independent and Sunday Tribune. He has edited anthologies and journals, and hosts a radio program, Undercover.

David Butler is the education officer at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin, where he conducts talks, lectures, and workshops on all aspects of the Irish writer. He is also presently engaged in giving a twelve-week creative writing course at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin, and gave a similar course at the Dra’ocht Theatre in Dublin. His creative writing has won a number of awards, including the Maria Edgeworth Award, the Ted McNulty Award, Brendan Kennelly Award, Golden Pen, and the 2005 Feile Filiochta International Award. His collection, Via Crucis, was runner-up for the Patrick Kavanagh Award. Last year he published An Aid to Reading Ulysses, Joyce/Pessoa, The Mirror and the Mask, and Selected Pessoa. This year will see the publication of his novel, The Last European.

Ita Daly is one of Ireland’s best known novelists and short story writers. Her work has appeared in Irish, British, and American publications, including The Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories. Her works include novels Ellen, A Singular Attraction, Dangerous Fictions, All Fall Down, and Unholy Ghosts. She has also published a children’s book, Candy on the Dart; a collection of short stories, The Lady with the Red Shoes; and her 2001 Irish Myths and Legends.

Gerald Dawe is the founding member of Poetry Ireland. His first collection of poems, Sheltering Places, was published in 1978. His second collection, The Lundys Letter, was awarded the Macaulay Fellowship in Literature. Other works include Sunday School, Heart of Hearts, The Morning Train, and Lake Geneva. He has also been awarded an Arts Council Bursary for Poetry, the Hawthornden International Writers Fellowship, and the Ledig-Rowholt Foundation Award. He is a member of the School of English at Trinity College, Dublin, where he is lecturer and director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing and was recently appointed Burns Visiting Professor at Boston College.

Vivenne Abbott has lectured widely on French language and literature and received a gold medal from the Government of France for her work promoting French culture in Ireland. Her literary work has concentrated on Irish political and social history, as seen in her book, Irishman’s Revolution. She is currently working on a study of the nationalistic figure Thomas Francis Meagher. She is also the author of several popular books on Irish and French cuisine, including Irish Cooking and Menu French Explained.

Vona Groarke’s poetry collections include Shale, Other People’s Houses, and Flight, which was awarded the Michael Harnett Award. In 2004 Flight and Earlier Poems was published by Wake Forest University Press, leading to the Hennessy Award, the Brendan Behan Memorial Prize, Strokestown International Poetry Award, and the Stand Magazine Poetry Prize. She has been the Writer-in-Residence with the National University at Galway and at Maynooth, and with Cavan County Council. She was a co-holder of the Heimbold Chair in Irish Studies at Villanova University in Spring 2004.

Sean Hardie spent over 30 years with the BBC, working as a producer/director of shows such as 24 Hours, Panorama, Newsnight, Not the Nine O’ Clock News, Spitting Image, The State We’re In, and The Lenny Henry Show. He won numerous awards for this work, including two BAFTA’s, the Silver Rose of Montreux, a U.S. Emmy, the U.K.’s Writers Guild, the Broadcasting Press Guild, and the New York Film Festival. He has published three well received novels, The Last Supper, Right Connections, and Till the Fat Lady Sings. He is a contributing writer to the London Independent and the London Times. He has worked as course director of TV and Film script courses for Screen Training Ireland, and wrote a screenplay, The Emerald Isle. He has been awarded residences and/or bursaries by the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, the Heinz Foundation/Hawthorne Castle, Cill Railig, The Heinrich Boll Trust, and Chateau Lavigny in Switzerland. In 2003 he represented Ireland at the SudEst Cultural Forum in Moldova and was a guest lecturer at the WICE Creative Writing Summer School in Paris, 2004.

Conor O’ Callaghan’s first published poetry collection, The History of Rain, was short listed for the Forward ‘Best First Collection’ Prize and won the Patrick Kavanagh Award. He has also published Seatown, and a chapbook, A History of ‘Hello’. He has also written extensively on Irish sports, appearing in the anthology Playing the Field: Eleven Irish Writers on Sport, and his book, Red Mist-Roy Keane and the Football Civil War.

Eugene McCabe has published the plays King of the Castle, Pull Down a Horseman/Gale Day, Roma, and a trilogy, Victims, which includes ‘Cancer’, ‘Heritage’ and, ‘Siege’.‘Cancer’ won the Writers Award in Prague, and second prize in the Prix Italia. His short fiction includes the novella Victims: A Tale from Fermanagh, Heritage and Other Stories, Christ in the Fields, A Fremanagh Trilogy, Heaven Lies About Us, and his highly acclaimed novel, Death And Nightingales.

Past Residencies