June 2007 (Carlow, Ireland)
Residency Highlights

• Eavan Boland, intrernationally acclaimed poet, will give a reading.

• Peter Fallon, noted poet and founder of The Gallery Press, Ireland's famous literary publishing house, will give a seminar and reading.

• Clare Keegan, author of Antarctica , a collection of short stories which won critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, will give a special fiction workshop and reading.

• Anne Enright, one of Ireland's most talented fiction writers, will be a mentor for fiction. She won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and has published in The New Yorker.

• Gerald Dawe, director of the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing and a lecturer at Trinity College, will give a cross-genre seminar.

Faculty and Visting Writers

Sean Hardie was born in 1947 and educated in Scotland and at Cambridge. He spent ten years as a current affairs producer with BBCTV covering assignments in Europe, the Middle East and North America, before moving to comedy , where he co-created and co- produced the successful BBC satire series ‘Not The Nine O’Clock News’. His subsequent TV credits as producer, writer and director include ‘Spitting Image’ and ‘Bremner Bird and Fortune. He also wrote and directed a number of films for John Cleese’s Video Arts company. He moved to County Kilkenny in 1986, since when he has worked primarily as a writer. He’s published three well-received novels: The Last Supper (published in the US as Table for Five), Right Connections and Till The Fat Lady Sings. He has continued to write for television, and more recently for the stage. His work has won many awards, including BAFTA (UK), an Emmy (US), The Silver Rose of Montreux, and The UK Writers Guild. He has designed and facilitated a number of courses for Screen Training Ireland and served as Writer in Residence in County Carlow. He’s married to the poet and novelist Kerry Hardie and lives in a field a long way from television studios.

Claire Keegan’s stories have won The William Trevor Prize, The Kilkenny Prize, The Martin Healy Award, The William Naughton Prize, The Olive Cook Award, The Allingham Prize, The Tom Gallon Award and The Macaulay Fellowship. She was awarded The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2000, and has twice won the Francis MacManus Award. She was also a Wingate Scholar. Her first collection, Antartica, was published by Faber & Faber in 1999. When published by Grove/Atlantic in the USA, it was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. The critic, Declan Kiberd, has called her the true successor to John McGahern: ‘a writer already touched by greatness.’ (Irish Times) Her second collection, Walk the Blue Fields, was published by Faber & Faber in May. She has recently been appointed Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University for the Spring semester of 2008. She lives in rural Wexford.

Brian Leyden is the author of the best selling memoir, The Home Place (New Island, 2002). Previous publications are the short story collection Departures (Brandon, 1992) and the novel, Death & Plenty (Brandon, 1996). His work for radio includes The Quiet Quarter Anthology (Lyric FM – RTE/New Island, 2004), The Clifden Anthology (Clifden Arts 2004) the Jacobs Award winning documentary No Meadows in Manhattan, the dancehall era, Even the Walls were Sweatin’, and more recently The Closing of the Gaiety Cinema in Carrick-on-Shannon. He edited issue seven and issue eight of the acclaimed Irish literary journal Force 10. He is a past winner of the Francis McManus Short Story Award, He has been a guest performer at The Merriman Summer School, The Green Ink Festival in London and the Ireland and its Diaspora Writers and Musicians tour of Germany, The Frank O’Connor Weekend and The Newport Festival Rhode Island.

LIVING TO TELL This workshop takes its title from Herman Melville’s epilogue to Moby Dick where he quotes Job ‘And I only am escaped alone to tell thee’ to explain how Ishmael, against the odds, survived to tell the tale. Writers live to tell. But what should they be telling, and how do they go about it?