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Press Releases
91Èȱ¬ Northern Ireland to support Writer in Residence post at Queen's University, Belfast
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91Èȱ¬ Northern Ireland has announced its support for a new 91Èȱ¬ Writer in Residence post in the School of English at Queen's University Belfast.
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This initiative is the result of a partnership between two of the principal promoters of the creative arts in Northern Ireland and will seek to develop links between the 91Èȱ¬, Queen's and the wider creative writing community.
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It has been established by the 91Èȱ¬ to celebrate the life and achievements of local writer and broadcaster Louis MacNeice.
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The 91Èȱ¬ Writer in Residence post will be based in the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University in Belfast.
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It will receive financial and broadcast support from the 91Èȱ¬ for a period of three years, in the first instance.
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The post-holder will have responsibility for the development of 91Èȱ¬-related projects, activities and events and will also play a full role in the work of the Seamus Heaney Centre.
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A recruitment process will commence shortly, with applications being invited from writers with a distinguished record of publication in prose fiction.
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Announcing this new initiative at an event in City Hall, Belfast, Peter Johnston, Head of Broadcasting with 91Èȱ¬ Northern Ireland, said: "The 91Èȱ¬ Writer in Residence at Queen's is a new and exciting partnership between 91Èȱ¬ Northern Ireland, Queen's and the wider creative community.
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"Louis MacNeice was an innovative writer and broadcaster. He contributed to the development of the 91Èȱ¬'s drama, documentary and arts programmes and his work continues to inform the work of writers at home and around the world.
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"Our partnership with Queen's will celebrate the enduring nature of Louis MacNeice's achievements and will seek to create broadcast opportunities for a new generation of writers."
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Professor Ciaran Carson, Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's, added: "This initiative will allow us to extend the small back room of the author into the wider world of the airwaves."
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Glenn Patterson, who works with the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's and is a presenter of the Study Ireland television series on poetry for 91Èȱ¬ Northern Ireland, said: "The 91Èȱ¬ Writer in Residence post will make an important contribution to the growth of the creative arts in Northern Ireland.
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"It will facilitate the development of new literary talent and enhance the 91Èȱ¬'s role at the heart of our region's creativity."
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Notes to Editors
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The funding announcement was made at an event in Belfast City Hall last night organised by The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's, entitled Between the Mountains and the Gantries: Belfast, Carrickfergus and other landscapes of Louis MacNeice. Ìý
The event launched the brochure for the Louis MacNeice Centenary Conference and Celebration, from 12 to 15 September 2007, organised by The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry and the School of English at Queen's University.
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The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's has recently launched its autumn programme of events.
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Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's, Professor Ciaran Carson, was born in 1948 in Belfast.
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He is the author of nine collections of poems, including The Irish for No, Belfast Confetti, and The Twelfth of Never.
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In recent years he has written four prose books: Last Night's Fun, a book about traditional music; The Star Factory, a memoir of Belfast; Fishing for Amber: A Long Story; and Shamrock Tea, a novel, which was long-listed for the Booker Prize.
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He has won several literary awards, including the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize.
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His translation of Dante's Inferno (2002) was awarded the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and in 2003 he was made an honorary member of the Irish Translators' and Interpreters' Association.
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Breaking News was awarded the 2003 Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection.
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Queen's Creative Writing Tutor Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast and educated there and at the University of East Anglia, where he studied for an MA in Creative Writing under Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter.
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He is the author of six novels: Burning Your Own (1988), for which he was awarded the Rooney Prize and a Betty Trask first novel prize, Fat Lad (1992), Black Night at Big Thunder Mountain (1995), The International (1999), Number 5 (2003), and That Which Was (2004).
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His short stories have been broadcast on 91Èȱ¬ Radio 3 and 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4 and articles and essays have appeared in the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Independent, Irish Times and Dublin Review.
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He has been Creative Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia, Writer in Residence at University College, Cork and also at Queen's University.
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He has also presented numerous television documentaries and an arts review series for RTE. Ìý
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