2024 Mentorship Bursary Recipients selected

Erin Connally is a writer and illustrator who has recently completed her MA in Creative Writing at University College Cork. Her writing and graphic novels focus on themes of discovery, mental health, and sitting with life’s larger, and often more difficult questions. Her collaborative graphic novella with Darcy van Poelgeest—The Cutting Garden—is set for publication with Image Comics in 2025.

Fiona Tracey is an Appalachian poet living in Cork. She earned her BA in Creative Writing from Shepherd University and her MA with Distinction in Creative Writing from UCC. A finalist for the 2024 Redline Book Festival Prize, Fiona has also been a featured poet at Ó Bhéal. Her poems explore womanhood and identity and have appeared or are forthcoming in Ragaire, Southword, HOWL, Orchards Poetry Journal, and The Stonecoast Review.

Fionn Rogan is a writer and energy engineering academic based in Cork. His poems have appeared in Drawn to the Light Press, around Cork City during the 2024 Cork Midsummer Arts Festival, and in the Annual Report of the Environmental Research Institute, UCC. He believes that writing poetry is a commitment to lifelong and lifewide learning and is hugely appreciative of the mentorship opportunity with Afric McGlinchey.

Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland. She has published two novels, The Quest for Lost Eire in 2014 and In The Days of Ford Cortina in 2021. Her  collection of poetry, Continuity Errors, was published by Lapwing Publications in 2010. She has since been published in a variety of print and online journals across Ireland, The UK, USA, and Canada.

Catherine Ronan is an award-winning Irish Poet. Writing poetry since childhood, her work has been published nationally and internationally. She has performed at multiple festivals including the Winter Warmer, Kinsale Arts, Cork International Poetry Festival and Electric Picnic. Her Poetry Collection, Elemental Skin was published by Revival Press and nominated for the Forward, Pigott and Heaney Poetry Prizes. She is a Cork Representative in the Cork Coventry Poetry Exchange 2024.

Mattie Brennan’s fiction has been shortlisted for several awards, including the Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition, the Cúirt New Writing Prize and, most recently, the RTÉ Short Story Award. Originally from County Sligo, he now lives in County Clare.

An award-winning short story writer and poet, Kate Durrant has been published in Irish Country Magazine, The Examiner, The Sunday Independent, West Cork Literary Festival, and in many anthologies and journals. She is a regular contributor of vignettes to RTÉ Radio One; Pause for Thought BBC Radio Two, and The Irish Farmers Journal. With writer Michelle McDonagh, she co-hosts the podcast, NATTER, where they chat with Irish and international authors.