The Artist-in-Residence Program
This initiative funded by the generosity of The Ireland Fund of Canada, welcomed its first writer, Bernard MacLaverty, for the month of October 2007. The visit was highly successful; while on campus Mr. MacLaverty gave public readings, met with students individually to discuss their writing, and gave workshops.
The second artist will be Claire Keegan, up-and-coming young Irish writer of short stories. We look forward to having her at St. Michael’s College for the month of March 2009.
Claire Keegan was raised on a farm in County Wicklow, on the southeast coast of Ireland. The youngest of a large Catholic family, she left home at the age of seventeen to study English literature and political science at Loyola University, New Orleans. She has also earned an M.A. in the teaching and practice of creative writing at the University of Wales at Cardiff, and an M.Phil. from Trinity College, Dublin.
Keegan’s stories have won numerous awards: the William Trevor Prize (judged by William Trevor), the Kilkenny Prize, the Olive Cook Award, the Tom-Gallon Award, the Martin Healy Prize, the Macaulay Fellowship, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. She was twice awarded the Francis MacManus Award and was also a Wingate Scholar. Her first collection of stories, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, won critical acclaim, and was translated into Chinese, Italian, and German. Her latest collection, Walk the Blue Fields, was published by Faber & Faber in 2007 and will be published by Grove/Atlantic in the U.S.
Keegan also has a great reputation as a teacher. She was writer-in-residence at University College, Dublin; University College, Cork; and Dublin City University; in 2008 she will serve as Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University. She has read from her work in more than twenty countries. Her stories are often compared to the stories of such masters as Trevor, MacLeod, Carver, McGahern, and Chekhov. They have been published in numerous journals and anthologies including The Faber Book of Best New Irish Stories, Granta, and The Paris Review. She ordinarily lives a quiet life in rural Ireland.
Bibliography Antarctica, Faber & Faber (UK) / Grove/Atlantic (US), 1999 Walk the Blue Fields, Faber & Faber (UK) / Grove/Atlantic (US), 2007