John Quinn

JOHN QUINN has written six children’s novels and has won The ‘Children’s Book of the Year’ award. He has also written one adult novel; two memoirs (including his best-seller, Good Night Ballivor, I’ll Sleep in Trim); and a variety of books related to his 25- year career as a producer/presenter with RTE.

Hilary Lennon

Hilary Lennon is the Frank O’Connor Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of English at UCC, where she is actively involved with the revival of O’Connor studies in Ireland. Frank O’Connor: Critical Essays, which she edited and to which she contributed, was published by Four Courts Press in 2007 and her
Introduction to O’Connor was published on the newly-created web-pages
devoted to Frank O’Connor’s works at the UCC Boole Library and to which she
is an ongoing advisor. She has given numerous talks on O’Connor, appearing
on RTÉ TV, Newstalk FM and BBC Radio Ulster. She is currently researching
the Selected Letters of Frank O’Connor, to be published by Cork University
Press in 2010.

Pat O’Connor

Pat O’Connor was born in Ardmore, Co. Waterford, in 1943, and raised in nearby Lismore. He studied Arts in UCLA and graduated in Film & TV studies from Ryerson University, Toronto.

In 1970, he returned to Ireland and worked as a producer/ director with Irish TV until 1982. In 1981, he directed the awardwinning film, “The Ballroom of Romance”. In 1984, he directed the feature film, “Cal”, starring Helen Mirren and John Lynch. In the following years, he directed, among other films, “A Month in the Country”, with Kenneth Branagh, Colin Firth and Natasha Richardson; William Trevor’s Novel - “Fools of Fortune”; “Circle of Friends”; “Dancing at Lughnasa” and a remake of “Sweet November”. He now lives in London with his wife and two sons.

Jim McKeon

Actor/Writer Jim McKeon has been involved in theatre all his life. He has written many plays, eleven books and has appeared in over a dozen films. He has featured in all the major RTE and BBC Arts’ programmes, including several appearances on the ‘Late Late Show’. He won the prestigious Illiad award in 2004 from the University of New Hampshire and has lectured in the U.S. He is Frank O’Connor’s most recent biographer and has performed his own one-man show on the life of Frank O’Connor throughout Ireland for the past seven years.

Maura Richards
(nee O’Dea)

Maura O’Dea, author and activist, was born in Mitchelstown in 1939. Having moved to Dublin in the late 60’,s Maura found herself pregnant and unmarried.
A few years after her daughter Carol was born, Maura became the prime mover in founding CHERISH, an association of unmarried mothers. In recognition of this, she was awarded the inaugural ‘Person of the Year’ award in 1975.

In her foreword to Single Issue, ’former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, describes how she was “cajoled, encouraged, indeed bullied, in her own inimitable way by Maura O’Dea into accepting the position of President of Cherish. It was a post that I was proud to hold for many, many years.”

In 1977, Maura married Graham Richards and, with Carol, upped sticks to live in England. In 1978/9, while living in Corvallis Oregon, she wrote her first book Two to Tango, which was published in 1981. Her second book, Interlude appeared in 1982 and a third, Single Issue, in 1998. Throughout the Eighties, Maura spent a lot of her time at the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common.Maura has a Masters Degree in Counselling and Psychology and left the NHS after 11 years to work as a counsellor in private practice.

She and Graham have two grandchildren and live in Kent.

Victoria Glendinning

Victoria Glendinning, author and journalist, was born in the north of England. She has lived in Dublin, West Cork, and now lives in Somerset, England. She
studied modern languages at Oxford University, and worked as a psychiatric social worker before beginning to write.

She has written three novels - The Grown-Ups, Electricity, and Flight - and
is the author of biographies of Vita Sackville-West, Rebecca West, Edith Sitwell, Trollope, Swift, Leonard Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen. She has added to her work on Elizabeth Bowen by recently editing Bowen’s love-letters to Charles Ritchie along with extracts from Ritchie’s private diaries. These have been published under the title, Love’s Civil War.

Vincent McDonnell

Vincent McDonnell, born in Co. Mayo, lives near Newmarket, Co. Cork He has published nine novels for adults and children; three works of non-fiction and over fifty short stories. His literary awards include The GPA Award, The RTE Francis MacManus Award, The Golden Pen Award and an RAI Award. He has edited Southword and numerous short story collections. He conducts workshops all over Ireland and teaches courses in Fiction Writing at the University of Limerick and the Munster Literature Centre. His latest book, The Story of the GAA, has just been published.

Cláir ní Aonghusa

Cláir Ní Aonghusa was born in Dublin, where she lives with her husband and sons. Her parents were originally from Ballyporeen in South Tipperary, (where Cláir is known as the “Dublin Clare Hennessy”) and she has strong family connections with the general locality, extending to Mitchelstown and the outskirts of Cork city. She is a former teacher and worked as the Coordinator of the Consumer Education Project in the Curriculum Development Unit, in Dublin, for six years.

David Marcus published her fIrst-ever short story in New Irish Writing in The Irish Press and her work has been published widely. She has been short-listed twice for the Hennessy Literary Awards. Her novel, Four Houses & A Marriage, published by Poolbeg in 1997, was warmly received. ‘It’s the minor details that grab the attention, and she is admirably unsentimental about her Irish roots.’ (The Sunday Tribune), ‘a beautifully paced book which brings the reader inside a mind steeped in despair’ (Irish Independent). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Boston/New York) published her novel, Civil and Strange, in the U.S.A. in March 2008. Described a ‘masterly’ (Library Journal), ‘richly detailed and deceptively simple’ (Publishers Weekly), it shows ‘deft touches of humor and an artful grasp of this world ... accomplished’ (Washington Post). It will be published by Penguin Ireland in the summer of 2009.

Ulick O’ Connor

Ulick O’Connor is a biographer, poet and playwright. His biographies include
Oliver St John Gogarty and Brendan Behan. The much-praised Celtic Dawn is a study of the Irish Literary Renaissance. He has written and performed one-man shows on Brendan Behan and Oliver St John Gogarty. A documentary feature film of his one-man show on Brendan Behan was released in 1987. His Diaries were published in May 2001 to great acclaim. The Joyce We Knew was published in 2004. Word Magic (2005), a selection from his favourite poets, sold out and has been followed in November 2007 by a second volume Laugh At Gilded Butterflies. In 2005, his play A Trinity of Two was revived and was an outstanding success. New and Selected Poems and Translations will be published in November of this year.

Winner of Short Story Competition 2008

Chani Anderson was born in Kilkenny, in 1978, to Scottish parents who had recently moved to Ireland. She spent her childhood in the Glen of Aherlow, Co. Tipperary. The wealth of local tales of fairies and legends ignited a love of reading and storytelling. She received a degree in Film and Television in 2000 from GMIT and spent much of the following eight years travelling the world and working intermittently in film production and theatre management.

In July 2008, after a life-changing four months volunteering as a
caregiver and teacher at a number of orphanages in Nepal, Chani decided
to return to Ireland and focus her attention on her primary passion, which
is writing. She is currently working on her first novel, Beans in a Peapod.