The Achill Heinrich Böll Association will present a reading by leading short story writer Claire Keegan at 8pm on Thursday September 27 at the Cyril Gray Memorial Hall, Dugort, Achill.
Claire Keegan was raised on a farm in Wicklow. She completed her undergraduate studies at Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana and subsequently earned an MA at The University of Wales and an M Phil at Trinity College, Dublin.
Her first collection of stories, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. Her second, Walk the Blue Fields, was published last May. It was Richard Ford’s book of the year. The stories have won several awards including The Hugh Leonard Bursary, The Macaulay Fellowship, The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, The Martin Healy Prize, The Olive Cook Award, The Kilkenny Prize, The Tom Gallon Award and The William Trevor Prize, judged by William Trevor. Twice was Keegan the recipient of the Francis MacManus Award. She was also a Wingate Scholar.
In 2010, she published her short story ‘Foster’ in The New Yorker. Richard Ford—the American authority on the contemporary short story—chose Foster as the winner of the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award. Keegan spent the rest of 2010 revising and expanding Foster into a novella which she published at the end of that year. She lives in Wexford.
The Achill Heinrich Böll Association is supported by Mayo County Council, The Arts Council of Ireland, The Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism, FAS and the local community.
All interested are invited to attend—admission free.
