Biographies

Alice Turpin

Alice Turpin is a writer, a swimmer and a maker of things. Instagram: @alhmt

Angela Duffy

Angela Duffy is a third year BA in Contemporary Art Practices student at ATU Castlebar, Co Mayo. She has been painting and drawing since childhood. She has had work selected and exhibited in multiple group shows over the years, most recently Boyle Arts Festival Exhibition (Jul 22) & ‘Equilibrium’ at The Linenhall Arts Centre Castlebar (Dec 22). If you would like to see more of Angela’s art, follow her on Instagram @angeladuffyartist

Anne Walsh Donnelly

Anne Walsh Donnelly writes poetry, prose and plays. She is the author of the poetry collections: ‘The Woman With An Owl Tattoo,’ and ‘Odd as F*ck,’ both published by Fly on the Wall press. She is based on the ATU Mayo campus and is the editor of the ATU Magazine. To find out more go to her website www.annewdonnelly.com

Aoife Murphy

Aoife Murphy was born and raised in Milton Keynes, England, before moving to Ireland. In 2013 she graduated, having done a Creative Digital Media degree in ATU Donegal Letterkenny. She writes sci-fi, fantasy and horror, has participated in NaNoWriMo seven times, and is sustained by an ever-filling cup of strong tea (mostly supplied by her partner).

Catherine Whitehead

Catherine Whitehead is a first-year mature student at ATU Sligo studying Writing and Literature. Catherine has a degree in Fine Art and enjoys painting and writing. She is currently working on a novel.

Celia Keenaghan

A mentor and facilitator committed to bringing knowledge, creativity and compassion to complex situations. Has had a regular writing practice since the early 1990s and belongs to the Drumcliffe Writers Group, a facilitated group using the Amherst method. www.keenaghan.ie/poetry linkedin.com/in/celiakeenaghan

Chris Sparks

Chris Sparks is an academic and writer from Hackney who moved to Leitrim in 2003. After decades spent writing political theory and sociology, he now writes poetry.

Dianne McPhelim

Dianne McPhelim lives in Co. Monaghan. A final-year Writing and Literature student at Sligo ATU, her poetry and short stories have appeared in the Sligo Weekender, Scrimshaw Journal, Spectrum Poetry Anthology (UK) and Eat the Storms Podcast.

Instagram: @thiswrittenlife

Damien Kelly

Damien Kelly is a third-year mature student at ATU Sligo studying Writing and Literature, from the north coast of county Mayo. In his spare time, he likes to listen to, and play, music and this is what inspired the poem Composition

Dr Martin O’Neill

Assistant Lecturer in Population Health Informatics & Statistics at ATU Sligo. Turned on by all things data, Martin enjoys spreading the good word to students, and anyone who’ll listen, and finds solace in woodwork and football when the computer says “No”.

Twitter: @dukeloath

Gavin Mc Crea www.gavinmccreaart.com www.facebook.com/ArtByGavinMcCrea/ Instagram @surfedout77 Twitter @surfartgavinmc

Visual artist Gavin Mc Crea lives on the West coast of Ireland where he pursues his love of surfing and painting. Concerned with connections and human relationships with place, Mc Crea draws upon a range of embodied memories associated with place and movements established from a lifetime of immersion in the sea through surfing. Embodied movements are acted out in the form of painterly gestures, across often familiar re-contextualised materials.

Geraldine Feehan

Geraldine Feehan is a first Year Writing and Literature (Online) student at ATU Sligo. Based in Co Louth, and occasionally Co Kerry, she is exploring her lifelong drive to write. Following a trail of exciting readings, she is enjoying a middle-aged meander along this path with no particular destination in mind.

Hazel O’Grady

I’m Hazel O’Grady a 21-year-old writer from County Mayo. I am completing my final year in the Writing & Literature course in ATU Sligo. I hope to publish my own poetry collection one day.

James Berrell

James Berrell is a musician and writer. He holds a BA Hons in Writing & Literature from ATU Sligo, Ireland. A musician since a young age, writing lyrics awoke his interest in story. Swapping the workingclass estates of Greater Manchester for Vienna, Austria shaped him as a writer prompting him to study movement and identity in his work. -www.jamesberrell.com

Jennifer Flynn

Jennifer Flynn is a part-time academic librarian and a full-time creative. She is involved with writing and theatre groups and textile art practices. This is the first new piece of writing she’s published after a hiatus over the last few years. www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-flynn-73b329124/

Jessamine O’Connor

Jessamine O’Connor is a Creative Practice Masters’s student in Sligo ATU, and a graduate of the Writing & Literature program there. She is an editor with Drunk Muse Press and The Poet’s Republic magazine and has a pamphlet forthcoming with Nine Pens Press with her co-editors. Her collection ‘Silver Spoon’ is published by Salmon Poetry and she’s working on a novel.

Kate Dowling

I am a second-year student of Writing and Literature. I hope that through my work I help even just one person feel less alone, as so many writers have done for me throughout my life.

Laura Grisard

Laura Grisard is a French/Irish visual artist based in the northwest of Ireland and has recently graduated from ATU Sligo. Her work consists of explorations and the ways of expression are explored through means of crossing different disciplines. Interested in the relationship between art and nature, she draws further exploration from the landscape, dreamscapes, mythology, and the body.

Linda Norton is the author of The Public Gardens: Poems and History (2011; introduction by Fanny Howe), a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Wite Out: Love and Work (2020), which John Keene and Eileen Myles call a “masterpiece” and Norman Fischer calls “a gorgeous, courageous book”. She lives in Oakland, California.

Liv-Andrea Banner is a Danish writer and filmmaker, who is currently enrolled in the Writing & Literature programme at ATU Sligo. Banner aspires to make a living of writing and producing, fuelled by a sincere interest in other people and the stories they carry.

Instagram: @livandrea_banner

Marta Baptista

Marta Baptista, originally from Portugal, is a student artist at ATU Mayo. Currently on year three of a BA in Contemporary Art Creative Practices, she has been exploring the commonalities between the west of Ireland and the west of Portugal landscape and culture through painting and monoprint techniques.

Maeve McCormack

Maeve McCormack moved to Sligo in the 1990’s from Dublin and this is her second time to be published in Scrimshaw. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and essays and this will bring her along the final stretch (and beyond) of a BA (Hons) in Writing and Literature at ATU Sligo.

Instagram: https://instagram.com/sligowarriorqueen

Website: https://bio.site/maevemccormack

Maeve O’Hair

Maeve O’Hair is in her final year of the Writing and Literature degree at ATU Sligo. Her poetry film, Stringism, was shortlisted by Homeland Projection at Damer House Art Gallery in 2022, and in December of the same year she won the poetry film competition at Spelt Magazine for her work, Making an Orchard

Marc Gijsemans

Several lives ago, Marc Gijsemans was born in Belgium. He only started writing after retiring to Ireland, when he joined the New Irish Communities in the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin. His most recent publication was a short story in the New Year’s edition of the Sligo Weekender.

Twitter: @GijsemansMarc

Facebook: /MarcGijsemans

Maria Hamill

Maria Hamill is a Scottish writer living in Co. Mayo. She received a BA in Writing and Literature from Sligo ATU and is currently undertaking an MA. She hopes to publish her own poetry collection one day. She loves to write about her own life and turn her emotions into something beautiful. Her inspirations are Sylvia Plath and William Butler Yeats.

Marie Lavin

Marie Lavin is a first-year mature student on the BA in Writing and Literature at ATU Sligo. Her travels, life experiences, and interest in people inspires her writing, from short stories to poetry and everything in between.

Marion Dowd

Marion Dowd is an archaeologist. Her research and publications focus on how people have engaged with caves from earliest prehistory through to the present day. She has recently ventured into the world of creative writing and has had two pieces published in The Cormorant’. https://independent.academia. edu/MarionDowd2

Martina O’Connor is a writer and artist based in the West of Ireland. She draws inspiration from a wide range of artistic forms, including painting, photography, film, and multimedia, to create atmospheric and sensory-rich poems and short stories. Martina is a member of the Achill Island writers group and describes her writing style as “painting with words.” Website: www.martinaoconnor.ie

Email: artist@martinaoconnor.ie

Méabh Callaghan

Méabh Callaghan is a writer from Co. Monaghan. She is currently a third-year student of the BA in Writing and Literature course at ATU Sligo. Méabh hopes to one day publish a novel and collection of poetry.

Michelle Gannon

Mayo based artist Michelle Gannon formally trained as a biologist and has a life-long interest in the natural world. Her artworks are inspired by native Irish flora, fauna and everyday life in the west of Ireland. She is currently studying for a BA degree in Contemporary Art Practices, at the Mayo ATU campus.

Miriam Byrne

Miriam Byrne is originally from Dublin and is a scientist by background. She moved to Corrán in Achill in 2022 where she renovated an old stone-built cottage. Her attraction to paint is the texture, always feeling her way to the final image. She is currently studying contemporary art practices at ATU Mayo.

Nina Fern

Nina Fern (she/her) is a visual artist, costume maker, and researcher residing in the northwest. Nina graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art and won the Ballinglen Art Foundation Emerging Artist Award in 2022. Currently, she is undertaking an MA in Creative Practice. www. ninafernart.myportfolio.com

Patricia Walsh

Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland. To date, she has published one novel, titled The Quest for Lost Eire, in 2014, and has published one collection of poetry, titled Continuity Errors, with Lapwing Publications in 2010. She has since been published in a variety of print and online journals across Ireland, The UK, USA, and Canada. She has also published another novel, In The Days of Ford Cortina, in August 2021.

Paul Hamilton

Paul Hamilton is a lecturer in Environmental Science at ATU Sligo. He has been writing for many years now and has been a member of several writer’s groups. Paul mostly writes poetry but also writes short stories. He is influenced by nature and the landscape.

Rhona Trench

Rhona Trench is Co-Chair of the Masters in Creative Practice and Chair of Performing Arts at ATU Sligo. She teaches a range of creative subjects, including directing for theatre (Performing Arts) and playwriting (Writing and Literature). She is widely published in the field of Irish theatre. She received funding for her playwriting projects in 2019, 2020 and 2021. She is a member of the Arts Council Peer Panel 2021-2024. In her free time she loves to play flute.

Róisín O’Shea

Róisín O’Shea is a journalist and a second-year student of Writing and Literature. She lives in north County Sligo with her husband and their cat, Charles Mingus O’Shea.

Rosaleen Glennon

Rosaleen Glennon was born in Dublin. She lived in Germany for ten years where she developed her lifelong interest in story. She writes short prose and memoir style pieces. She now lives in Co. Roscommon.

Sarah McGrath

Sarah lives in Wexford, where she has spent much of her life raising a family and building a home. Having once upon a time studied Early and Modern Irish, she is now further pursuing her love of language through the Writing and Literature course at ATU Sligo. She draws much of her inspiration from seemingly inconsequential moments, and many of her stories are centred around the unspoken conflicts and yearnings that shape our inner worlds.

Sarah O’Keeffe

Sarah O’Keeffe grew up in Canada and spent many years in the Caribbean. She loves writing about talking animals, creating fun visual and digital stories, and working with children. Sarah currently lives in Sligo with her husband Mark, seven-year-old son Charlie, and their BIG puppy Simba!

Interdisciplinary experimental visual art best describes Séamus Grogan’s current practice. Originally from Leitrim, he has worked in various creative disciplines over the years, in his recent solo show ‘Timeframes’ at Solas Art Galleries he explores the transience of place incorporating photographic, filmic and sonic elements, his ongoing research continues to produce new imagery as his visual enquiry and practice-based research continues.

Séamus is a member of the Fine Art staff in the Yeats Academy of Arts Design & Architecture in ATU Sligo. (Instagram: @sgroganartist )

Sorcha O’Malley is a third-year Theatre Design student who loves art and movement. Her work reflects this synergy of interests and is demonstrated in her creative pursuits. From illustration, to design, poetry to yoga, she enjoys finding ways to expand her eclectic vocabulary and connect the dots between seemingly unrelated media.

My name is Stefano; I am a Belgian/Italian student at ATU Sligo undergoing my third year in Writing and Literature, aiming to become a fantasy writer, editor and publisher. I have always been fascinated by creating worlds imbued with magic and mystical lore and have recently finished a fantasy novel purposed to launch a science-fiction/fantasy-driven franchise.

Stephen O’Leary

Stephen O’Leary is a Cork-based writer and second year student of Writing and Literature (Online) in ATU Sligo. His first published piece, Erosion, won the Sligo Weekender Short Story Competition in 2021. His passion for storytelling and the written word includes diverse forms such as poetry, prose, screenwriting, playwriting and video editing.

Susan Stewart

Susan Stewart lives with her husband and two children in Dublin. Susan worked as a Montessori teacher for many years before taking the plunge and applying for the Writing and Literature course at ATU Sligo. She is in her first year of the course and enjoying it very much.

S. H. Tuohy is a recent graduate of ATU Sligo’s Writing and Literature programme. He was published in the Green Carnations poetry anthology and was part of the editorial team for issue 7 of The Cormorant He is presently spending most of his spare time researching Dr James Barry and working on a fantasy novel.

Teresa Heffernan

Teresa is a language tutor, writer, and mixed media artist. Despite being a loner and somewhat of a recluse, she is very interested in everyday life and personal emotions. Her writing reflects that interest. Teresa is currently enjoying studying Writing & Literature at ATU Sligo. www.teresaheffernan.ie/

Tommy Weir

Sharon Keely is a student on the MA in Creative Practice and grew up in Cobh, Co. Cork and Dungarvan, Co. Waterford. She has always written, in Ireland and while living in the U.K., U.S.A. and Australia. She has a trunk full of handwritten pages which she finally is ready to edit.

Tommy Weir has a career spanning the arts from visual art and theatre, to design and film. He has worked in Dublin, New York and the North West as a curator, a designer, a producer, a filmmaker, a photographer, and a teacher.

Tony Keenan

My name is Shea Fahy and I’m from Tuam, Co. Galway. I’m twenty-one years old and I’m halfway through my BA in Writing and Literature at ATU Sligo. I’ve always been a lover of poetry and enjoy reading classical literature and fantasy novels.

Sheila was born and continues to live on Achill Island. Her writing questions ‘gaps in boundaries’: intrapersonal, interpersonal, physical, political. Sheila is a published writer in fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Sinéad McClure’s poetry is published in The Stinging Fly, Southword Journal, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and other fine publications. Her chapbook The Word According to Crow was a winner of the Roscommon Chapbook Award. She is currently studying for an MA in Creative Practice at ATU Sligo.

Website: www.sineadmcclure.com

Instagram: @sinead.mcclure

Tony Keenan is a Laois man living on the North Leitrim/Sligo border, where he finds the inspiration for most of his poetry. He retired in 2018, after more than 40 years working, and set out to see if there really is a writer inside him. He is enjoying the journey. Tony is a mature student of Writing & Literature at ATU Sligo.

Una Mannion

Una Mannion is a lecturer in Sligo ATU. Born in Philadelphia, she now lives in Sligo and has won numerous awards including a Hennessy Poetry Prize. Her debut novel, A Crooked Tree, was published in 2021. Her second novel, Tell Me What I Am will be published in June 2023.

Yvonne McDermott

Yvonne McDermott lectures on the History and Geography programme at ATU Mayo and has a particular interest in the history and archaeology of the medieval period. In her spare time, she likes to draw and, particularly, enjoys pen and ink drawing.

Zuzana Podolová

Zuzana Podolová is from the Czech Republic and is a second-year student studying Writing & Literature at Sligo ATU. This poem was created as an assignment for the Experimental Literature module. The idea behind this was to ‘disrupt the spectacle.’ www.instagram.com/susanpodol/