New Creative Writing from UCC
Poets and short fiction writers from the UCC MA and PhD Creative Writing programmes will be presented by Leanne O’Sullivan, and will read from their new work. Readers include Ciara McCarthy, Adrian Wistreich, Niamh Prior and Claire Creely.
Ciara McCarthy is a twenty-two year old student from Cork City. She holds a BA in English and Irish and is currently studying the MA in Creative Writing in University College Cork. She works part-time in GameStop on Patrick Street and is the younger of two children. She credits her parents for always supporting her love of writing and has literary influences on both sides of the family. Ciara’s motto is “excelsior”, a Latin term meaning “ever upward.”
Adrian Wistreich studied ceramics and design in London in 1999, after 22 years in business as a research publisher. He moved to Kinsale and set up Kinsale Pottery & Arts Centre, a craft teaching centre. In 2014, he joined the new Masters in Creative Writing at UCC. A winner of the Fish Flash Fiction prize, his writing aspirations currently lie in short story and interactive fiction.
Niamh Prior is from Kinsale. Her work has appeared in publications including the Holly Bough, Revival and The Stinging Fly. She completed her MA in Creative Writing at UCC last year, producing for her thesis a collection of poetry. She is currently in the first year of her PhD in Creative writing, for which she is concentrating of writing fiction.
Claire Creely is a student at the University College Cork pursuing a MA in Creative Writing. Claire graduated from Saint Mary’s College with a BA in Psychology and a minor in Creative Writing. Her poetry has previously been published in Chimes Literary Magazine. She is originally from Louisville, Kentucky.
Kathy D’Arcy is a poet, workshop facilitator and and youth worker based in Cork city. Originally trained as a doctor, she is currently writer in residence with Tigh Fili Cultural Centre. Her second collection The Wild Pupil, was recently launched in Dublin by Jean O’ Brien and in Cork by Thomas McCarthy. In 2013 she was awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary and in 2014 an Irish Research Council Award to support the future development of her work. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing at UCC.
Erin Fornoff & Caleb Brennan
You can listen to Erin’s reading here.
Appalachian-born Erin Fornoff is an American poet living and working in Dublin. She has performed her poems at major music festivals such as Glastonbury, Electric Picnic, Indiependence, and dozens of others. She has been featured poet at Farmleigh House alongside Hozier, and featured at spoken word nights across Ireland. She is artistic director of Lingo, Ireland’s first ever spoken word festival. She has been featured live on RTE Arena Stage, and has been published in The Stinging Fly, New Planet Cabaret, Penduline, Cyphers and many others. She won First Prize for Poetry in The Cellar Door, 3rd Prize in the Strokestown Poetry Award, and won the 2013 StAnza Digital Slam. She was selected for the 2014 Poetry Ireland Introductions Series and has an M.Phil in Creative Writing (Distinction) from Trinity College Dublin. She is opening for Hollie McNish’s upcoming Irish tour in Dublin, Cork, and Galway.
Caleb Brennan (b. 1994) is a native of Limerick city. Caleb’s work has appeared in numerous magazines around Ireland, the UK and the US such as Wordlegs, The Linnet’s Wing, Skylight 47 and The Blue Hour magazine. In 2014, his Chapbook entitled Unsocial Media was highly commended by the judges in the BYOB poetry magazine pamphlet competition (NY, USA). He was also the youngest ever programmed poet for Cuisle Limerick City International Poetry Festival in Oct, 2014, and has been a featured reader in several other events. A freelance journalist by trade, he is currently growing his first beard.
Martin Dyar
You can listen to Martin’s reading here.
Martin Dyar grew up in Swinford in County Mayo. His début collection of poems Maiden Names (Arlen House, 2013) was chosen as a book of the year in both the Guardian and The Irish Times, and was shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize and the Shine/Strong Award. His play Tom Loves a Lord about the life of the Irish poet Thomas Moore was staged at the Samuel Beckett Theatre in 2011. Martin Dyar won the Patrick Kavanagh Award in 2009, and the Strokestown International Poetry Award in 2001. He has also been a recipient of two Irish Arts Council Bursary Awards for literature. Most recently, Martin was a writer in residence at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where he was a Dublin UNESCO City of Literature Fellow.
Melissa Diem
You can listen to Melissa’s reading here.
Melissa Diem was born in New York and has lived in Ireland since she was twelve. She has a degree in psychology and an MPhil in Creative Writing from Trinity College Dublin and was awarded a Bank of Ireland Millennium Scholarship. She has published the novel Changeling [Pan (UK) and Gill & Macmillan (Ireland), 2014] and poetry in several journals. She was the Featured Poet in The Stinging Fly Spring issue 2010. She was shortlisted for both the Hennessy Literary Awards and the Bradshaw Cork Literary Review Poetry Manuscript Competition and joint runner up for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award. Melissa has exhibited visual media throughout Ireland including at the RHA, Iontas, Guinness Hopstore and The Ark. Recently Melissa began making poetry films based on her poems which have been screened at festivals worldwide, she was a finalist at the La Parola Immaginata- Trevigliopoesia 2013, Italy and recently commissioned for a film by Filmpoem and Felix Poetry Festival in association with The Poetry Society UK, 2014. Her début poetry collection This Is What Happened includes her own artwork and is published by The Poetry Bus Press, Spring 2015.
Ó Bhéal in association with Foras na Gaeilge presents a bi-lingual evening with
Aifric MacAodha
You can listen to Aifric’s reading here.
Tá Aifric Mac Aodha ag obair ina heagarthóir cúnta leis an nGúm. Foilsíodh a céad chnuasach Gabháil Syrinx (An Sagart) sa bhliain 2010. Tá sí ina comhairleoir Gaeilge ag Poetry Ireland agus ina heagarthóir filíochta leis an Stinging Fly. Tá a saothar aistrithe go neart teangacha eile, an tSeicis, an Rúisis, an Fhraincis agus an Iodáilis san áireamh.
Aifric Mac Aodha is an assistant editor with the Irish language publisher An Gúm. Her first collection Gabháil Syrinx [The Capture of Syrinx (An Sagart)] was published in 2010. She works as an Irish language consultant for Poetry Ireland and is the Irish language poetry editor for The Stinging Fly. Her work has been translated into many languages, including Czech, Russian, French and Italian.
Alan McMonagle
You can listen to Alan’s reading here.
Alan McMonagle is a short fiction writer, playwright and poet based in Galway. His work has received awards from the Banff Centre for Creativity (Canada), the Professional Artists’ Retreat in Yaddo (New York), La Fundación Valparaiso (Spain) and the Arts Council of Ireland. His poems have appeared in many journals, among them The Shop, The Moth, The Stony Thursday Book, Orbit, Freefall, The Cúirt Annual, Skylight47 and Crannóg. He has also published two collections of stories, Liar Liar (Wordsonthestreet, 2009) and Psychotic Episodes (Arlen House, 2013). Last year, his radio play Oscar Night was produced and broadcast as part of RTE’s Drama on One season.
For more visit www.alanmcmonagle.com
Richard Halperin
You can listen to Richard’s reading here.
Richard W. Halperin has seen over 230 of his poems published in magazines in Ireland and the UK since 2005. His full collections are via Salmon: Anniversary (2010); Shy White Tiger (2013); Quiet in a Quiet House (listed for Autumn 2015). In 2014 four chapbooks appeared via Lapwing: Mr Sevridge Sketches & A Wet Day; Pink, Ochre, Yellow; The Centreless Astonishment of Things. Richard will read mainly from Shy White Tiger and The Centreless Astonishment of Things, as well as from a work-in-progress.
Bernadette Cremin
You can listen to Bernadette’s performance here.
Bernadette Cremin is touring her new show altered egos, an award winning one woman show that tells the tales of six untidy lives (edited for Ó Bhéal). It includes 6 monologues that weave narrative and poetry from Bernadette’s first 3 published collections. Her fourth collection Loose Ends was published by PigHog in 2013 and Papercuts, her new and selected collection is imminent with Salmon Poetry, Eire. Valentine’s day is also set to be the launch date for her second spoken word/song/music album guilty fist, with musician/producer Paul Mex.
Bernadette was the outright winner of the 2005 Biscuit Publishing “Challenge” themed poetry competition. Perfect Mess is her prize award collection. Bernadette lives in Brighton, has won a Year Of The Artist award, a performance poetry bursary and has been published in the UK and Eire. Alongside solo commissions she has collaborated with a music producer (State Art), a film-maker (Indifference Productions) a photographer (ProjectPoetry) and a geneticist (Promise of Threat). Her collection Speechless (Waterloo Press) followed in 2007.
Bernadette has previously worked as a social worker, tea lady, sociology lecturer, TEFL teacher, bank clerk and waitress. This chequered and eclectic career path has invaluably enriched her true vocation as poet and performer.
“Cremin has built a magic bridge between performance and the page; she has proven palpably and infectiously, how there needn’t be such a divide in the first place. Speechless is quite aptly titled, for that’s exactly how it leaves one: it proves that Cremin’s poetry is as tangible and affecting on the page as it is when uttered from her lips like subtle spells.” – Alan Morrison
Noel Duffy
You can listen to Noel’s reading here.
Noel Duffy was born in 1971 and studied Experimental Physics at Trinity College, Dublin. After a short period in research, he turned to writing and went on to co-edit (with Theo Dorgan) the anthology Watching the River Flow: A Century in Irish Poetry (Poetry Ireland, 1999) and was winner of the START Chapbook Prize in 2003 for his collection The Silence After. His début collection In the Library of Lost Objects (Ward Wood Publishing, London, 2011) was shortlisted for the Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish poet. His second collection On Light & Carbon followed in autumn 2013, again published with Ward Wood. His poems have been published widely in magazines and journals both in Ireland and abroad, including Poetry Ireland Review, The Financial Times and The Irish Times. His work has also been broadcast on RTE Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany and Today with Pat Kenny, as well as been included in the anthologies, The Open Door Book of Poetry and Slow Time: 100 Poems to Take you There, both edited by Niall MacMonagle and more recently in If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song (Dedalus Press, 2014) edited by Pat Boran and Gerard Smyth. Noel is currently completing work on a third collection, Summer Rain.
