Write a commentTomorrow night (24th April) in Newry Library Six Award winning authors will read excerpts from their work. The event starts at 7.30pm and all are welcome.
Nathaniel McAuley, Matt Kirkham, Pauline Burgess, Jan Carson, Kenneth Gregory and Anthony Quinn are six of Northern Ireland’s most talented rising stars of the art world who have been awarded grants from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
Awards under the Artists Career Enhancement Scheme (ACES) are made annually to professional artists working in music, visual arts, literature and participatory arts and are among the most prestigious awards bestowed by the Arts Council each year. Twelve people were awarded totally.
In addition to receiving a bursary of £5,000 each, the 12 artists have all been partnered with a professional organisation to help each of them to deliver a major new creative work.
Roisin McDonough, Chief Executive of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, commented: “These 12 artists are already established and highly regarded in each of their fields. The awards are given in recognition of their work to date and to provide them with support to take their careers to that vital next level. The ACES programme has been running successfully now for four years and addresses the need for on-going training and skills development within the sector.”
Artists Biographies
Pauline Burgess is a Carryduff based author, who was born and grew up in Rostrevor, Co. Down. Her published work includes short stories and she has recently secured a two-book deal with Blackstaff Press for her Pony Palace series. Aimed at 5-8 year olds, the books are inspired by Lessans Riding Stables, located between Carryduff and Saintfield, and the characters based on the horses there. Pauline teaches English in St Malachy’s High School, Castlewellan, Co.Down. She has one child, Emma, whose horse riding experiences sparked the original idea for the Pony Palace series.
Working with the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s Pauline’s ACES award will enable her to dedicate time to working on her next novel.
Nathaniel Joseph McAuley is a Belfast-based poet and a Masters graduate of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. In 2012 he began teaching as a peripatetic creative writing tutor in St Malachy’s college and has since won a month’s teaching residency in Baltimore, Maryland for March 2014. His debut pamphlet The Dyer’s Notes on Indigo was released at the 2013 Belfast Book Festival and his work has appeared in Poetry Proper and the Open Ear Journal.
His ACES award will see him work with the Seamus Heaney Centre to write and edit a new collection of poem’s entitled The Joiners Song.
Kenneth Gregory is a fantasy fiction writer, originally from Finaghy and currently living in Crumlin. His debut novel The Polaris Whisper was published in December 2012 by Blackstaff Press, with artwork by Jim Fitzpatrick. He is the first fantasy fiction writer to be published by Blackstaff. The book is the first in the Polaris Trilogy. He has recently completed his second novel (awaiting publication) and is currently working on a number of other writing projects.
Kenneth will use his funding from the ACES programme to work with the Seamus Heaney Centre and Blackstaff Press to create a new interactive e-book.
Matt Kirkham was born in Luton. He now lives in rural Co. Down and works as a peripatetic creative writing tutor in St. Malachy’s College. Matt’s collection The Lost Museums (Lagan Press) won the 2006 Rupert and Eithne Strong Prize for best first collection in Ireland. Aged Fourteen My Grandfather Runs Away To Sea won the Templar 2011 Iota Shots Pamphlet Prize. His third publication The Dumbo Octopus is forthcoming and features poems which have appeared in The Yellow Nib and Irish Pages among other publications. His work is represented in a range of anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic.
Matt will use his ACES award to work with the Seamus Heaney Centre to help him create a new collection of poems inspired by the life and work of the revolutionary twentieth century mathematician Kurt Godel.
Jan Carson is a writer and community arts development officer currently based in Belfast. She has a BA in English Literature from Queen’s University Belfast and an MLitt. in Theology and Contemporary Culture from St. Andrew’s University, Scotland. She has previously lived and worked in Oregon, Colorado and London.
Jan has had several short stories published in literary journals on both sides of the Atlantic and has recently read her work at the Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin. She also has experience in screenplay writing and writing for radio and theatre. Her first novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears is due for publication in spring 2014 with Liberties Press, Dublin.
Jan will use her ACES award to work with the Seamus Heaney Centre to complete her second novel Roundabouts.
Anthony Quinn is a Dungannon-based writer. He has been shortlisted twice for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award (1996 & 1998). He recently signed a contract with UK publisher No Exit Press for three historical thrillers set during the Irish War of Independence to be published in 2014 and 2015, while Disappeared and Border Angels, which were originally launched in the US by Mysterious Press, will be published in the UK and Ireland this year by another major publishing house.
Disappeared, his debut novel, was shortlisted in 2012 for a Strand Literary Award by the book critics of the Guardian, Washington Post, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and other US newspapers. It was also selected as one of the top ten thrillers of 2012 by US book reviewer Kirkus Reviews.
Anthony will use his ACES award to work with the Seamus Heaney Centre to create a new crime fiction novel set in post-conflict Northern Ireland.
