Writers-in Residence Announced

Writers-in Residence Announced

Joanna Walsh and Lindsey Sedgwick appointed

Maynooth University and Kildare County Council Arts and Library Services are delighted to announce the appointment of Joanna Walsh as writer-in-residence and Lindsay Sedgwick as screenwriter-in-residence. The partnership between Maynooth and Kildare County Council sees artists supported in the community, and brings these artists into contact with students and the greater public. Joanna and Lindsey will run workshops on campus and in Kildare Libraries, and will host public readings and events during their tenure.
 
Commenting on the announcement Dr Victor Lazzarini, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Celtic Studies and Philosophy, said “Maynooth University is honoured to have Joanna Walsh and Lindsey Sedgwick join this year as writer and screenwriter in-residence. Joanna and Lindsey bring a wealth of experience and immense passion for the arts, and will inspire our students and the local community. Their appointment follows the extremely successful tenure of Eoin McNamee as writer-in-residence and Hugh Travers as screenwriter-in-residence in 2015.” 
 
Joanna Walsh has been described as ‘one of our most important writers.’ Her books are Vertigo, published in Ireland by Tramp Press; Hotel; Grow A Pair; and Fractals.  Widely published in journals and magazines, Walsh also runs the Twitter handle @read_women, for which she won a Women in Publishing Award in 2014. Elegant, simple, and unsettling, her work challenges genre and form. Vertigo’s stories, the Chicago Tribune wrote, “inject new life into the short-story form. Walsh takes language to liminal spaces, describing reality — or, more profoundly, what we perceive to be our reality — in fresh ways. The effect is like zero gravity: both dizzying and dazzling.’ Hotel, the Sydney Review of Books noted, ‘feels like something you want to endlessly quote: sharp, knowing, casually erudite...  there is power and an affecting gravitas in what Walsh does with detail.”
 
Lindsey Sedgwick is an award-winning screenwriter whose work spans genres: she has written feature films, television movies, television episodes, documentaries, and shorts. Her award-winning series Punky has been recognized as the first mainstream cartoon series in the world in which the main character had special needs. In addition to her screenwriting credits, Lindsey is a prolific playwright whose work has been produced in Ireland and in the UK for BBC4, and whose writing has been described as ‘gripping’ and ‘startlingly good’. During her residency Lindsey will see another full-length feature go into production.
 
Joanna Walsh will take part in the Kildare Readers Festival, Joanna and Sara Baume will be in conversation with Rick O’Shea on Saturday 15 October at 8pm

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