Cork County Council have announced award-winning poet, Victoria Kennefick has been appointed to the position of writer in residence for a ten-month period beginning this December.
The writer in residence collaborates with communities in the county, improving access to literature and creative writing workshops.
Mayor of the County of Cork, Cllr. Frank O’Flynn says “We are delighted to be collaborating with a writer of Victoria’s calibre. Her experience and enthusiasm for writing in all its forms will lend itself to a very successful residency. This is a fantastic opportunity for aspiring writers and readers in the county to engage with a published writer. With this residency, we aim to promote creative writing and reading contemporary literature in the community. We look forward to seeing the outcomes of this residency.”
A key part of the Writer in Residence programme is the use of local library branches as centres of creative writing.
During her residency Victoria plans to work with writers' groups, community groups, young people, (as well as online) in five branches throughout the county: Bandon, Carrigaline, Cobh, Kanturk, and Mitchelstown, .
Victoria says, “I am delighted, as a Cork woman, to be returning to my native county to collaborate with writers, students, and readers in developing and enriching their relationship and engagement with literature. Cork County Council has provided me with many opportunities as an emerging writer in the past. It is an honour to pay this support back in this way and I am looking forward to meeting and collaborating with writers all over the county.”
Her debut poetry collection, Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet Press, 2021), won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and the Dalkey Book Festival Emerging Writer of the Year Award.
Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, New England Review, PN Review, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, and elsewhere.
Her second collection is Egg/Shell.
She is currently working on her first novel.
