Mary Dorcey
Mary Dorcey,(born 1950)the author of ten books,is an Irish poet, novelist and short story writer. "Life Holds Its Breath."her latest book was published this year 2022 by Salmon Poetry. She was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for her first collection of stories "A Noise from the Woodshed.' She has won critical acclaim internationally for her portrayal of romantic and erotic relationships between women and for her subversive and tender exploration of the mother/daughter dynamic. Her most recent poetry collection, published in February 2022. is "Life Holds Its Breath." She has been described as  a lyric poet, a philosopher/mystical poet and an activist poet. She speaks of her fiction as exploring the intimate space between social structures and individual imagination. Life and education. Dorcey was born in County Dublin, Ireland. She is a member by peer election of Aosdána the Irish Academy of Arts and Letters. She was educated in Ireland and in Paris [Paris Diderot University] and at The Open University. She is a Research Associate at Trinity College Dublin where for ten years she was a writer in residence at the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, during which time  she conducted seminars on contemporary English literature and led a creative writing workshop. She has also taught in the School for Justice at University College Dublin She has published seven collections of poetry, one novel, one collection of short stories and one novella. Dorcey is recognised as a forerunner of the gay and lesbian rights movement in Ireland. She was a founder member of Irish Women United, Women for Radical Change and The Movement for Sexual Liberation. She has lived and worked in the United States, England, France, Spain and Japan. Recognition. Dorcey won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature  in 1990 for her short story collection "A Noise from the Woodshed". Her novel "Biography of Desire" has been both a best seller and achieved critical acclaim. It was described in the Irish Times review as 'the first truly erotic Irish novel.' In 2010 she was honoured by peer election to AOSDANA the honorary Irish Academy of Arts and Letters, nominated by poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnail and novelist Eugene McCabe. Her poetry and fiction is taught internationally at universities throughout Europe, the United States, Britain, Canada, Africa and China. It has attracted a wealth of international research over the past  30 years and has been the subject of countless academic essays and critiques. It is reproduced in more than one hundred anthologies representing Irish, Gay and Women's literature. Her poems are studied on both the Irish Junior Certificate English curriculum and on the British O Level English curriculum. 'First Love' has been selected once more for the revised Junior Cycle and was also included in the BBC Anthology 'A Hundred Favourite Poems of Childhood.' They have been performed on radio and television (RTÉ, BBC, and Channel 4.) and her stories have been dramatized for radio (BBC) and for stage  productions in Ireland, Britain and Australia: 'In the Pink' (The Raving Beauties) and, 'Sunny Side Plucked.' She has won five major awards for literature from the Arts Council of Ireland: 1990, 1995, 1999 and 2005 and 2008. Her poetry and fiction explore issues of sexuality, identity and the multifaceted lives of women through their role as mothers, daughters, and lovers. Her themes include the cathartic role of the outsider, political injustice and the nature of the erotic power to subvert and transfigure. She has won popular and international critical acclaim for her portrayal of romantic and erotic relationships between women  and her subversive and tender view of the mother/daughter dynamic. Further reading. Bisexuality, Queer Theory, and Mary Dorcey's Biography of Desire www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/casablanca/pratt2.html May 31, 2001 - Bisexuality, Queer Theory and Mary Dorcey's Biography of Desire: An ... categorically that the first person I loved was of the male sex" (153). Bisexuality, Queer Theory, and Mary Dorcey's Biography of Desire postcolonialweb.org Heather Ingman - 2007 - Literary Criticism (Dorcey, 1989, 158- 9) The semiotic world 'beyond the grasp of speech' ... Kate observes to herself that: Mary Dorcey continues her exploration of the life of... Katarzyna Poloczek, University of Łódź: 'Women's  Power To Be Loud.' 1