TCD's Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, housed in the original Wilde family home at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, will celebrate its 10th anniversary next month with a symposium on the doyen of Irish fiction, William Trevor, readings by the centre's graduates and writer fellows, and the launch of sixteenafterten, an anthology of the work of the current crop of creative-writing students, writes Caroline Walsh.
Trevor event to mark 10 years of Trinity course
THE SYMPOSIUM, William Trevor at 80, takes place on April 25th and 26th and is a celebration of one of TCD's most famous alumni. Trevor, who was born in Co Cork in 1928, will be travelling from his home in England for the event. Symposium participants include Hermione Lee and John Wilson Foster. Though it's a ticketed event, there is no admission charge and all are welcome at the Thomas Davis Theatre in the Arts Building. For details and bookings, contact delanep@tcd.ie.
The readings, on Tuesday evenings, start on April 1st, with poet Derek Mahon, writer and current Irish Writing Fellow at the college Mary Morrissy, and Anglo-Hungarian poet George Szirtes, introduced by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. On April 8th, the line-up, introduced by Deirdre Madden, is writer Sebastian Barry, poet and academic Douglas Dunn, and creative-writing graduate Jacqueline McCarrick. Another famous TCD graduate, Anne Enright, participates on April 15th, with poet and publisher Peter Fallon and poet Bernard O'Donoghue, introduced by Gerald Dawe, director of the centre. On April 22nd, novelist Claire Kilroy, playwright Gina Moxley, and writer Andrew O'Hagan, introduced by literary agent Jonathan Williams, will complete the series. Start time: 7.30pm at the Swift Theatre in the Arts Building.
High-flier Melling's gift to eagles
Irish children's author OR Melling has won the Green Earth Book Award for young adult fiction with her book The Light-Bearer's Daughter. The awards are for literature that inspires young readers to appreciate the environment. The writer wins $2,500 (€1,600), plus $500 (€386) for an environmental organisation; Melling has chosen the Golden Eagle Reintroduction Project, which seeks to reintroduce the bird of prey to the west, where it became extinct in 1910.
Shortlist for RTÉ story competition
Well-known writers Philip O'Ceallaigh and Martin Malone, stand-up comedian and radio playwright Kevin Gildea, and Dutch-born opera singer and novelist Judith Mok are among the authors of 22 stories up for the RTÉ Radio 1 Short Story Competition 2007. The judges, under the chairmanship of RTÉ'S Seamus Hosey, are Billy Roche, Zlata Filipovic and Peter Sheridan. Also on the shortlist are Jackie Blackman, Gerry Boland, Elizabeth Carty, John Austin Connolly, Eileen Counihan, Ciaran Folan, Richard Gibney, James Martyn, David Andrew McIlroy, Ruth McKee, Alys Meiriol, Thalia Miller, Joe O'Donnell, Mary O'Gorman, Denis O'Neill, Kevin Power, Vincent Scott and Mairide Woods.