day events

Panels of academic papers and workshops of creative pieces will run throughout the day on Saturday, 7th March 2009.

10.00 – 11.20                        Opening Plenary            

Chair: Jocelyn Ferguson

ocelyn FergusonJocelyn Ferguson was born in the west coast of Scotland but spent many of her formative years in New York. She moved back to Britain and lived on the Isle of Arran, in Hampshire, and finally in London where she worked as an actor for Major Road Theatre Company. She began writing for theatre, including for Theatre-in-Education, before switching to writing fiction. Her novel Rope Tricks is published by Virago and she won an Arts Council Award for the novel she is currently working on. She has taught Creative Writing at Warwick University and Keele University, and Political Theatre and European Theatre at Staffordshire University. She now lives in Belfast.


11.20 – 11.40                        Break

11.40 – 13.00                        Poetry Panel/Prose Workshop

Poetry Panel

Chair:  Matt Kirkham

Matt Kirkham
Matt Kirkham was born in Luton in 1966, now lives on the Ards peninsula, and works as a teacher. He was featured in Blackstaff's New Soundings anthology of writing from the QUB writers' group, and in Lagan Press's Poetry Introductions 1. His collection The Lost Museums won the 2007 Rupert and Eithne Strong Award for a first collection.



Prose Workshop

Facilitator: Dr Ian Sansom  

Ian Sansom - Copyright Paul MaddernDr Ian Sansom was educated at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He is the author of the non-fiction book The Truth About Babies (2002), the novels Cortex (2000) and Ring Road (2004), and the Mobile Library detective series, The Mobile Library: The Case of the Missing Books (2006), and The Mobile Library: Mr Dixon Disappears (2006). He is a founder and editor of the magazine The Enthusiast, whose publications include The Enthusiast Almanack (2006). He writes for the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and The Spectator, and his essays have appeared in numerous books, magazines and journals. He is a regular broadcaster on Radio 3 and Radio 4, and is the BBC Writer in Residence at Queen’s.

13.00 – 14.30                        Lunch

14.30 – 15.50                        Prose Panel/Poetry Workshop

Prose Panel

Chair:  Glenn Patterson 

Glen Patterson - Copyright John Harrison
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast and educated there and at the University of East Anglia, where he studied for an MA in Creative Writing under Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter. He is the author of six novels: Burning Your Own (1988), for which he was awarded the Rooney Prize and a Betty Trask first novel prize, Fat Lad (1992), Black Night at Big Thunder Mountain (1995), The International (1999), Number 5 (2003), and That Which Was (2004). His short stories have been broadcast on Radio 3 and Radio 4, and articles and essays have appeared in the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Independent, Irish Times and Dublin Review. He has been Creative Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia, writer-in-residence at University College Cork and Queen's University. He has also presented numerous television documentaries and an arts review series for RTE.

 

Poetry Workshop 

Facilitators: Dr Miriam Gamble and Dr Eoghan Walls

Dr Miriam Gamble was born in 1980, and is a poet and critic based in Belfast. She has been a Research Fellow at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2007, and her pamphlet, This Man’s Town, was published by Tall Lighthouse in December 2007.   Miriam Gamble - Copyright Paul Maddern
     
Eoghan Walls   Dr Eoghan Walls won an Eric Gregory award in 2006, and is working on his first collection with the generous help of the Irish Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon). He recently finished a Ph.D. in the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast.


16.10 – 17.30                        Closing Plenary

Chair:  Carlo Gébler 


Carlo Gebler - Copyright David BarkerCarlo Gébler was born in Dublin in 1954. He is an author of novels, including 'The Eleventh Summer', 'The Cure' and
'How to Murder a Man', the memoir 'Father & I', and the history 'The Siege of Derry' as well as the short story collection 'W.9. & Other Lives', some plays and several works for children.

He is also a film-maker and his documentary 'Put to the test' won a Royal Television Society award. He is a member of Aosdána. He is married with five children.