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April 01, 2011

Three Kildare Writers Featured in New Anthology

Anthology of New Irish Writing - "Original Sins" - to be launched on April 8th @ 7.30pm. Venue: Theology Hall, St. Kierans College, Kilkenny

Original Sins Three Kildare writers - Jeanne Beary, Ilona Blunden and Valerie Ryan, are part of the twenty two new Irish writers featured in this anthology. They, along with the other nineteen new Irish writers featured in this anthology of fictional stories are guilty of the sin of originality. They share their many versions of saints, scholars and demons who speak from around the world and beyond it, from Ireland, from abroad, from places of the mind or from the past. Their characters discover old lives and invent new ones, fall in love and out of it, engage with life, death and all its promises. Travel through the imaginations of these new voices. 

The authors in this new collection have sharpened their blades for four years, working together and alone. They are all students of the Creative Writing for Publication course at NUI Kilkenny Campus who have all truly learned that less is more on paper. They know the value of silence in a story and use the shadows words cast to great effect.  They are writers whose work you will read again. Remember their names. You will remember their stories and read more of them in years to come.

 The course was founded and continues to be run by novelist and columnist Suzanne Power and broadcaster and author John MacKenna.  Both consider their students to be colleagues of the craft after four years working hard to hone it: “The individuals featuring in this collection have stayed the course literally since the very beginning. Our job is to persuade them of what is already in themselves, to foster it to the point where they no longer need convincing. At NUI Kilkenny they share words and stories with companions and receive the kind of criticism that encourages them to write with a closer affinity to the voice in their head, rather than the voice they think they should hear.”

The Creative Writing for Publication course was devised to be based on practical experience and without pretension, for the benefit of the individual voice in the group setting, for the benefit of the phrase or premise that might be rejected as being ‘too easy’, ‘too simple’.

“As their tutors we have learned more than we could ever have taught and gained more than we have ever given.” Suzanne Power says.

Several of its graduates have gone on to be published and there will be more in the years to come.

If you want further details contact the following:
Rachel Nolan, Press and PR:   085 2076215
Jeanne O’Dwyer, Launch Manager: 086 22253966
Maeve O’Byrne, NUI Kilkenny:   0567775910
Suzanne Power, Editor:        086 104 7122