News

IWC Bursary

17/11/2020

The Irish Writers Centre have recently announced their support for 52 writers in the form of bursaries to attend a development course at the IWC between now and next summer. I am delighted to be one of these writers and to have the opportunity to undertake funded professional development at one of the leading institutions for writers on the island.

SIAP Grant 2020-2021

2/11/2020

Thanks so much to Arts Council NI for the SIAP funding - last year I was longlisted by the Community Arts Partnership for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing for a poem about Kathleen Bridle, an artist from the ill fated Ulster Unit of 1934.

Abridged 0 – 58: Kassandra

16/11/2019

the only heat in the house was the fire

30/10/2019

I have a flash piece in new issue of The Honest Ulsterman today, commemorating 50 years since 1969 - half a century of our worst demons writ large.

https://humag.co/prose/the-only-heat-in-the-house-was-the-fire

TU Short Story Competition 2019

16/10/2019

Absolutely delighted to have won the 2019 TU Short Story Competition, judged by June Caldwell, at Red Line Book Festival, Dublin with my story 'You Can See That She is Crying'. All shortlisted stories will be published in an anthology entitled Infinite Possibilities which will be published later this year. Very grateful to the organisers and to June for this award and really looking forward to the chance to read the anthology when it is finished.

Xenophon: Ex Aqua Renascens

19/9/2019

New erasure poetry pamphlet available in a very limited edition at the launch of Xenophon: Life With Life inside this evening at Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Co. Cork.

The Belfast Debate on Europe with The Tangerine

18/9/2019

The International Language of Space has been reprinted in this lovely publication by The Tangerine to accompany the Debates on Europe conference at Queen's University Belfast.

Xenophon: Life With Life Inside

3/9/2019

Xenophon: Life With Life Inside
McGibbon O’Lynn

Sirius Arts Centre

20 September – 02 November 2019
Opens Thursday 19 September 6.30pm

Life With Life Inside is a new installation by visual artist Siobhán McGibbon and writer Maeve O’Lynn, exploring the concept of post-human reproduction, a celebration of the divine feminine and a paean to the female body. A ritualistic and site-specific space, Life With Life Inside marks the departure from one world and entry into another, inspired by Cobh’s history as the departure for millions of emigrants bound for the new world, many through necessity rather than choice.

Life With Life Inside is part of McGibbon O’Lynn’s on-going Xenophon Project collaboration and is inspired by the concept of personhood – in interrogating whether human is an a priori criterion for what it is to be a person, they are also interested in the aftermath of the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment, the long fight to win and finally enjoy bodily autonomy, and the female body itself. McGibbon O’Lynn simultaneously showcase the sense of freedom and full personhood this change has wrought, while reflecting on the fact that these rights are denied to or are at risk in countries all around the world. While the show runs, the North of Ireland waits impatiently for 21st October to arrive, when both abortion and equal marriage will begin the long awaited process of passing into law in the absence of a government at Stormont, and for the first steps down this road to finally be taken.

This title Life With Life Inside is taken from a line from Xenophon: Reanscens Ex Aqua, a new pamphlet of erasure poetry and images by McGibbon O'Lynn which hybridises the entirety of their alternate history of tomorrow, The Xenophon Archive (xenophonproject.org) to date, which will be launched as part of this show at Sirius Arts Centre.

In this installation, the viewer is invited to enter an inverted futurespace, completely transfigured and contemplate fertility, reproduction and engage in veneration of the female.

Irish based artist Siobhán McGibbon (Cork) and writer Maeve O’Lynn (Belfast) began their collaboration on The Xenophon Project in 2015. The Xenophon Project is an inter-disciplinary art and words project that employs sculpture, narrative, animation and technology to explore the interstices between art and science, and the future of the human species in the anthropocene epoch. Xenophon is a speculative commentary on a spectrum of related bio- ethical issues: current research in bio-inspiration, regenerative medicine, stem cell applications, transhumanism, and immortality.

Life With Life Inside also features a new critical essay exploring the evolution of their work to date and their cultural and contextual touchstones.

Supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Cork County Council.

BE OUR GUEST: NEW WRITING ON HILLSBOROUGH’S PAST

13/3/2019

You can book your tickets now for this event to launch a new collaborative publication produced by Hillsborough Castle and Gardens and The John Hewitt Society. Five prominent Northern Ireland based writers have been commissioned to respond to five historical figures from Hillsborough’s past and have created new pieces of writing to animate the lives of these former residents. The publication also includes additional contributions by participants from a range of community groups who took part in workshops with the writers. The launch will include readings from each of the writers and a selection of readings by community participants. The writers included are: Jan Carson, Emily DeDakis, Maeve O’Lynn, Ian Sansom and Myra Zepf.

I will be working with Atlas Women's Centre in Lisburn on bringing together an epistolary-inspired narrative based on the life of Lady Alice Maria Hill.

This project is supported by Heritage Lottery Fund and Community Relations Council. We would like to thank the Institute for Conflict Research for their support for this project.

Other Things Shine

18/10/2018

New work up on Fallow Media this week.