Award-winning dramatist Michael West has been appointed as UCC’s Writer-in-Residence for 2015/16. Born in Dublin in 1967, West is a co-founder with Annie Ryan, of the Corn Exchange theatre company.

A noted adaptor of literary work, West has collaborated in Corn Exchange productions of Joyce’s Dubliners, Nabokov’s Lolita and most recently, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, by Eimear McBride.  His play Freefall won an Irish Times Theatre Award for best new play and best director in 2009 and productions of Man of Valour, Dubliners, Everyday, Dublin By Lamplight, Foley and The Seagull have all won Irish Playwright and Screenwriters Guild awards. He has also translated many texts, including The Separation of Body and Soul by Calderón and Death and the Ploughman (Johannes von Saaz).

His latest play, Conservatory, was staged at the Abbey Theatre in 2014.

West has been an adjunct professor in drama at Trinity College Dublin and he has taught playwriting at the Lir Academy, Dublin. While at UCC, he will teach on the MA in Creative Writing and offer workshops for the university community at large.