2021 Briena Staunton Visiting Fellowship Awarded to Claire Keegan

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’.” 

Residential Writing Weekend with Claire Keegan

January 1–3, 2021

Teach Bhride Holistic Centre, Tullow, Co. Carlow, Ireland

The residential writing weekend with Claire Keegan will see all participants arriving at Teach Bhride on Friday afternoon before dinner. The next two mornings will be spent writing in any genre in well lighted, quiet spaces without mobile phones.

Lectures and discussions will be held in the afternoons and evenings on the following:

  • Letters by Anton Chekhov & others
  • Letters by writers on writing
  • Essays by Eudora Welty, Frank O’Connor and Flannery O’Connor
  • Hemingway’s advice on writing
  • Some poems on writing and creativity
  • Viewing of A Private World, a documentary on John McGahern

Tuition includes all meals and two nights’ accommodation, with everyone arriving before dinner on Friday, helping themselves to breakfast both mornings, and leaving before dinner on Sunday evening. This course will suit anyone interested in a quiet weekend of writing. None of what is written will be read aloud. It’s a chance to engage with the intricacies of the creative process and use your imagination.

To book your place, contact ckfictionclinic@yahoo.com Tuition is 500 Euro. A 50% deposit secures.

Read reviews of previous courses and workshops on g.page/ckfictionclinic/review

Claire Keegan’s story collections include Antarctica, Walk the Blue Fields and Foster (Faber & Faber). These stories, translated into 17 languages, have won numerous awards. Her debut, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. “These stories are among the finest stories recently written in English,” wrote the Observer. Walk the Blue Fields, her second collection, was Richard Ford’s Book of the Year in 2010, and won the Edge Hill Prize, awarded to the strongest collection published in the British Isles. Foster won the Davy Byrne’s Award, the then world’s richest prize for a single story. New Yorker readers chose Foster as their story of the year. It was also published in Best American Stories and is now on the school syllabus in Ireland. Keegan has earned an international reputation as a teacher of fiction, having taught workshops on four continents.

“Every line seems to be a lesson in the perfect deployment of both style and emotion.” – Hilary Mantel

“The best stories are so textured and so moving, so universal but utterly distinctive, that it’s easy to imagine readers savoring them many years from now and to imagine critics, far in the future, deploying new lofty terms to explain what it is that makes Keegan’s fiction work.” – The New York Times

“Every single word in the right place and pregnant with double meaning.” – Jeffrey Eugenides, The New York Times

“Keegan is a rarity, someone I will always want to read.” – Richard Ford