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.