clairekeegan

Online literature course from Professor Mary McCay

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Dates: October 9 – November 27, 2025

Time: 7:30pm – 9:30pm GMT (1:30pm – 3:30pm CST)

Cost: €350

THIS EIGHT-WEEK COURSE WILL BE TAUGHT OVER ZOOM

Mary McCay was an English professor at Loyola University New Orleans where she taught American
Literature, Film, Travel Writing and Irish Literature. She was advisor and professor to internationally acclaimed author, Claire Keegan.

Over the years, Professor McCay has continued to teach. Her most recent course, which ran for eight weeks online was titled, Women and The Booker Prize.

For this course, Professor McCay has chosen texts written by women who have experienced upheaval in their lives because of worsening conditions in their countries. The impact of social and political events on the lives of the women themselves and on their families is chronicled across different time periods, social classes, races, and countries. Women often find their lives disrupted by external circumstances that result in life-changing experiences. The choices they are forced to make–personal, social, and political–often result in upheaval and uncertainty.

To book a place, please contact Carmel at carmelnicanultaigh@gmail.com

Week 1: Relentless, Wudasie Nayzgi
Week 2: Whereabouts, Jhumpa Lahiri
Week 3: Behind You Is the Sea, Susan Mauddi Darraj
Week 4: The Storm We Made, Vanessa Chan
Week 5: The Storm We Made, Vanessa Chan (continued)
Week 6: Catalina, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Week 7: Girl, Edna O’ Brien
Week 8: Looking At Women Looking At War, Victoria Amelina

Participants are responsible for sourcing and reading the texts prior to the beginning of the
course.

2021 Briena Staunton Visiting Fellowship Awarded to Claire Keegan

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Trinity College Dublin and Pembroke College Cambridge are delighted to announce that Claire Keegan is the 2021 Briena Staunton Visiting Fellow. The fellowship has been generously endowed by Clinical Professor in Radiology James Meaney in memory of his aunt, Briena Staunton. Following an agreement between the two colleges, a leading international writer, nominated alternately by Trinity and Pembroke, will spend a month writing and supporting students in Dublin or Cambridge. This year Trinity nominated Claire Keegan, an international award-winning short-story writer, who will spend March 2021 in Cambridge.

Claire is an Irish writer whose stories have been published in English by Faber & Faber, have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, Best American Stories, won numerous awards – and are translated into 17 languages.  She is internationally renowned as a teacher of creative writing. 

Claire’s debut collection of stories, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. The Observer called these stories: ‘Among the finest recently written in English’. It was also awarded the William Trevor Prize, judged by William Trevor. 

In 2007, her second collection, Walk the Blue Fields, was published to huge critical acclaim and went on to win The Edge Hill Prize for the strongest collection published in The British Isles. The prize was adjudicated by Hilary Mantel. 

Foster (2010) won The Davy Byrnes Award, then the world’s richest prize for a story. It was judged by Richard Ford: “Keegan is a rarity-someone I will always want to read’.”