Canadian author Zsuzsi Gartner, the inaugural Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow for the City of Cork, will be teaching on the MA in Creative Writing this semester.  The fellowship – sponsored by the Munster Literature Centre – helps to give our MA an international dimension.

The fellowship, in its first year, replaces the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize and encourages international writers to become involved in the cultural life of the city for three months.  Applications are now open for next year’s fellowship – http://www.munsterlit.ie.

Zsuzsi is leading a module on the short story and will be giving a reading on campus during her stay in Cork.

Gartner – http://www.zsuzsigartner.com/  –  is the author of the acclaimed story collection All the Anxious Girls on Earth, and editor of the bestselling anthology Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow. Her most recent book, Better Living through Plastic Explosives, was a finalist for the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize. She is the winner of several National Magazine Awards including a silver in 2015 for fiction.

Her short stories have been widely anthologized, including in The Penguin Book of Canadian Humour, Best Canadian Stories 2010 and 2011, and Imaginarium, and broadcast on CBC in Canada and NPR in the U.S.

She has taught on the MFA at the University of British Columbia, and has also mentored numerous writers through the Banff Centre for the Arts various writing programmes.  She is also the founder and director of Writers Adventure Camp at The Point in Whistler, BC, now in its third year.