Press Releases
Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council’s Hugh Leonard Writer’s Bursary
awarded to Claire Keegan
Press Release
Wednesday 14th November 2007
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council announces Claire Keegan as the inaugural recipient of the Hugh Leonard Writer’s Bursary 2007. The first year of the award attracted a terrific response from mid-career writers in theatre, TV and film, fiction and non-fiction. The bursary of €10, 000 was awarded to Claire Keegan to recognise her exceptional talent as a writer and support her professional development at this time.
The bursary, launched by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council in 2007, marks the special relationship between Hugh Leonard and his home-place of Dalkey and his significant contribution to theatre, TV and film both in Ireland and abroad. The Hugh Leonard Writer’s Bursary will be made available on a bi-annual basis to a mid-career writer. In this, its first year, Claire Keegan’s outstanding ability as a writer has set the bar high for future years.
Carolyn Brown, Acting Arts Officer, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council comments ‘In this its inaugural year, the Arts Office of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council is delighted that a writer of such exciting talent as Claire Keegan has been awarded the Hugh Leonard Writer’s Bursary and I look forward with eager anticipation to reading the work that Claire will create with the support of this bursary’.
Claire Keegan grew up on a farm on the Wicklow-Wexford border. At the age of seventeen she travelled to New Orleans to study English and Political Science at Loyola University, where she earned an MA, an M.Phil. Her short stories have won numerous awards including The William Trevor Prize, The Olive Cook Award, The Martin Healy Prize, The Tom Gallon Award, The Francis MacManus Award, The Kilkenny Prize, The McCauley Fellowship and The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. She was also a Wingate scholar. Claire’s debut, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. Her second book, Walk the Blue Fields, was published in May 2007. Both books are published by Faber & Faber. In addition Claire was writer-in-residence at DCU, UCC and UCD. She currently lives and works in Wexford.
For further information of The Hugh Leonard Writer’s Bursary please contact Claire Power at the Arts Office, Dún-Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council t. 01 271 9530 or e. cpower@dlrcoco.ie
