Maynooth University and Kildare County Council Arts and Library Services are thrilled to announce the appointment of Nathan O’Donnell and Susan Tomaselli as Writers-in-Residence for 2020/21.
Dr Nathan O’Donnell is a writer, researcher, and one of the co-editors of an Irish journal of contemporary art criticism, Paper Visual Art. His writing has appeared in magazines including The Dublin Review, gorse, 3: AM, The Manchester Review, Southword, The Tangerine, and Banshee (forthcoming), amongst others. A former winner of the Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair, he has been awarded artist’s bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council, as well as artist’s commissions from IMMA, Dublin City Council, the Arts Council of Ireland, and South Dublin County Council. He has been a Research Fellow at IMMA since 2017 in relation to the IMMA Collection: Freud Project, and his first book, on Wyndham Lewis’s art criticism, is forthcoming from Liverpool University Press. He has led several public art projects and other participatory and educational initiatives; he has also edited and produced several project-based publications and zines. During the residency, Nathan will be completing a book of creative non-fiction, Yum Yum, about queer/ rave subcultures in Ireland at the turn of the millennium.
Susan Tomaselli is founder and editor of the ground-breaking gorse journal. She is former co-editor of 3:AM Magazine and editor at 3:AM Press. She has written for The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Stinging Fly, Bookmunch, CultureNI, and contributed to Little Black Book of Books, The Beat Anthology, and We’ll Never Have Paris, amongst others. She edited Dogmatika from 2005 until 2009. Susan has participated in numerous literary festivals (West Cork Literary Festival, Cúirt, Doolin Writers’ Weekend, Listowel, Mountains to Sea), and provides consultation to arts organisations (Temple Bar Gallery + Studios Dublin, The Arts Foundation UK) and literary publishers. Susan is currently working on a novel-in-essays, Traces, on memory, trauma, technology, and failure.
We look forward to welcoming both Nathan and Susan to Maynooth and to having them on campus for the coming year. Both authors will be involved with the Kildare Readers’ Festival, and a programme of events open to the public will be announced in the autumn.
For further information about the residencies, please contact Dr Oona Frawley (oona.frawley@mu.ie).