It is our pleasure to introduce Kerrie O’Brien, our international guest writer for Many Voices writing group with Move On. Kerrie will join the group at their closing event at the Byres Road Book Festival in Glasgow alongside Karen Campbell, who has been leading the writing workshops.
Kerrie O’Brien is a writer and poet from Dublin. Her work has appeared in such places as Sunday Miscellany, Hennessy New Irish Writing, Cyphers, The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Banshee Lit, The Irish Examiner, Southword, Orbis and The Penny Dreadful among others.
Her flash fiction piece That Night won the RTE Arena Flash Fiction Competition 2012 and Culture Ireland sponsored her to read in Los Angeles in June of that year. She was one of the emerging writers chosen to read at the Cork Spring Poetry Festival 2013 as well as the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series, Listowel Writers’ Week, Cuisle International Poetry Festival and at the London Irish Arts Centre.
Her short fiction piece Dole features in the New Planet Cabaret Anthology published by New Island in association with RTE Arena. She was shortlisted for the Penny Dreadful Novella Prize 2015 and is currently working on her first novel. Her work has recently featured in the film series Dublin: A Year in Words commissioned by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature.
Kerrie is also the Editor of Looking At The Stars, an anthology of Irish writing which raised over 21,000 Euro for the Rough Sleeper Team of the Dublin Simon Community. She has spoken about literary activism and homelessness at the University of York and in Dublin Castle as part of Cruinniu na Casca.
“For a long time I had been watching the growing number of people huddled in doorways, queuing for soup and sandwiches outside the GPO, begging outside cafes, laying out sleeping bags and handwritten signs, essentially dying on the streets of Dublin. I had grown completely disillusioned with my Government for ignoring this crisis”, Kerrie describes the impetus to the anthology project in the Irish Times.
You can find out more about Kerrie and her work on her website.
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