Category Archives: Uncategorized

Paul Asta joins the “Best Poets”

paul-astaCreative writing MA student Paul Asta, right,  will feature in the second annual Best New British and Irish Poets anthology, due from Eyewear Publishing in March 2017. http://store.eyewearpublishing.com/  Paul, who’s on a Fulbright scholarship at UCC, was included for his poem, Apiarist’s Chest. 

Modelled on the American Great American Poetry series, running since 1988, the first Best New British and Irish Poets was published last year and looks set to be a fixture on the poetry calendar. In all, the work of 50 “rising stars” of poetry will be included in the second anthology.

The competition to be selected  is open to any poet of British or Irish citizenship and/or UK or Irish residency who has not yet published a full-length collection.

This year’s entries were adjudicated by the British poet Luke Kennard http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/fcw/kennard-luke.aspx.  Kennard, the author of six collections, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 2007.  He was named as one of the Poetry Book Society‘s Next Generation Poets in 2014. https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk .He lectures at the University of Birmingham.

A Roll-Call of Writers

Screen Shot 2015-04-23 at 10.33.37The last of our visiting writers to the MA in Creative Writing is Canadian novelist Charles Foran, who will give a workshop to students on April 27 in conjunction with the Cork World Book Fest. Foran has published extensively in fiction, non-fiction, biography and journalism. Among his publications are the novel, Planet Lolita, a biography of Mordechai Richler, and a non-fiction account of a Belfast family’s journey through the Troubles, The Last House of Ulster.

Foran is just one of the many distinguished practitioners who have lectured on the MA this academic year. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford kicked off the Autumn term with a masterclass for students. Leading literary agent, Ed Victor, visited to talk about pitching and promoting work. Radio dramatist Hattie Naylor, film director Carmel Winters and IMPAC award-winning novelist, Kevin Barry, all gave dedicated workshops in their field.

Script consultant Lindsay Sedgwick lectured on gaming scripts and film, while publishing editor Liz Hudson gave a masterclass on fiction editing.

Up-and-coming Irish poet Doireann Ni Ghriofa team-hosted a poetry workshop with our writer-in-residence, Leanne O’Sullivan. Other visiting poets to the campus, Matthew Hollis, Nick Laird and Vona Groarke, participants in the prestigious reading series hosted by the School of English, UCC Library and the Munster Literature Centre, met students informally to discuss craft. Students also had the opportunity to meet Scottish poet Robin Robertson and UK novelist Zadie Smith, who also read on campus this year.

In the coming year, we hope to welcome Irish Fiction Laureate Anne Enright who will give a guest workshop to students in November 2015, poet Maurice Riordan, editor of the Poetry Review and Professor of Poetry at Sheffield Hallam University, and novelist Kevin Barry, who will make a return visit to teach on the programme.

RESIDENCY OPPORTUNITIES FOR WRITERS

University College Cork and the Fulbright Commission
cordially invite you to 
INTER-CHANGES: RESIDENCY OPPORTUNITIES FOR WRITERS
with US Fulbright Awardees & Alumnus
10.30 a.m. – 1 p.m.
28th November 2014
Boole Library Meeting Room
University College Cork

RSVP to emma.loughney@fulbright.ie by 21st November 2014
This event will also be available live on Webinar, contact above email for further details by 21st November

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PROGRAM & BIOS

10.30 a.m. Registration Tea / Coffee
11.a.m. Welcome from Colleen Dube, Director Fulbright Commission & Claire Connolly, Head of English, UCC 
11.15 a.m. US MFA Program & Writers Residencies:  Overview, Opportunities, Application Processes
Brendan Mathews, US Fulbright Scholar
12 p.m. Experiences of Writers Residency Programs
Erin O’Sullivan, 2014 – 2015 US Fulbright Student at UCD and Oregon State MFA Alumnus
Nell Regan, 2011-2012 Irish Fulbright Alumnus and International Writers Program, University of Iowa Alumnus
1 p.m. Networking Lunch

Professor Brendan Mathews is an author and faculty member at Bard College, Simon’s Rock. While in UCC on his Fulbright Scholarship Professor Mathews teachs a course on the short story to Creative Writing MA students, offers workshops on writing fellowships & related professional opportunities in the US, and is working on his own novel. Mathews has a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the University of Virginia. His short stories have been published in The Southern Review and The Manchester Review and selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories, 2010 and 2014.

Erin O’Sullivan is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (BA) and Oregon State University (MFA). Ms O’Sullivan is enrolled on the Master’s Programme in Irish History at University College Dublin, focusing on issues of identity and voice in lesser-known women writers, and the broader role of women in Irish history. Her short stories have previously appeared in MAKE: A Chicago Literary Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, Sheepshead Review, and Bartleby Snopes, among others. She has taught numerous undergraduate writing courses at both Oregon State University and Linn Benton Community College.

Nell Regan studied history at UCD and has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and The Poets’ House in Donegal. Underworld, a chapbook was published by Lapwing in 2004. Her non-fiction publications include the first biography of Helena Molony in Female Activists, Irish Women and Change. In 2006 she was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Awards and in 2007 she received the Dublin City Council Bursary for Literature. Preparing for Spring, her debut poetry collection, was nominated for the 2007 Glen Dimplex New Writing Awards. In 2011 she published Bound for Home,a second book of poetry in conjunction with artist Monica Boyle. She received a Fulbright Scholar Award in 2011 to attend the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa and spend time at University of California, Berkeley and in New York. She completed a residency in the Centre Cultural Irlandais in Paris in Autumn 2013 and was Artistic Director of the West Cork Literary Festival in 2014. She just launched her third book, One Still Thing.

Poetry Reading by John FitzGerald, UCC Librarian

Winner of the 2014 Kavanagh Poetry Award

Tuesday, October 21st

5:30-7:00 pm

Library Learning Space

Boole Library

You are cordially invited to a unique celebration of the Cork and UCC poetic traditions, a poetry reading by UCC Librarian John Fitzgerald, winner of the 2014 Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award.
Also reading will be runners-up and highly commended entrants Kevin Clancy, Lena Cronin, and John Mee.

Jointly hosted by the School of English & Library Services at UCC

All are very welcome

UCC Library & The Glucksman Gallery present The Great Book of Ireland Saturday Workshops

Book-binding and Book Conservation – with Paul Curtis (Conservator, Muckross Bindery)

Saturday 7 June 10am -4pm

 

A Poetry Workshop – with acclaimed poet, Matthew Sweeney

Saturday 21 June 10am – 4pm

 

A Calligraphy Workshop suitable for beginners – with Denis Brown (The Scribe of The Great Book of Ireland) Saturday 28 June 10am-4pm

 

All Workshops are Free.  Bookings are essential.

A number of free places on each workshop will be held for UCC Staff & Students

 

(part of the Faces Pages exhibition programme.  For bookings see www.glucksman.org  or tel : 021 4901844)

Reading by Patrick McGuinness

Please join us for a reading by distinguished poet, novelist, and memoirist Patrick McGuinness, who will read in UCC on Thursday 29th May at 6pm (Room G27, O’Rahilly Building). 
 
Professor of French and Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, Patrick McGuinness’s novel, The Last Hundred Days was longlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2011. His two volumes of poetry, Canals of Mars (2004) and Jilted City (2010) were published by Carcanet. Most recently, in Other People’s Countries (Jonathan Cape, 2014), he has published an account of childhood experiences in Bouillon, Belgium, and his memories of his Belgian and Irish parents. 
 
Following its publication in March, Other People’s Countries has received glowing reviews : in the Observer, John Banville said that ‘McGuinness is a marvellous writer – literally, his book is filled with marvels – who, in John Updike’s formulation, gives the ordinary its beautiful due. The world that is conjured in Other People’s Countries is clear, palpable and distant, like a view seen through the wrong end of a telescope. On every page there are breathtakingly gorgeous images, similes, metaphors.’ 
 
Patrick McGuinness’s academic books include Maurice Maeterlinck and the Making of Modern Theatre (Oxford UP, 2000), Symbolism, Decadence and the fin de siecle (University of Exeter Press, 2000). Amongst other editions, he has has edited J-K Huysmans, Against Nature for Penguin Classics and the prose and poems of the Welsh modernist poet Lynette Roberts for Carcanet