Mary Dorcey

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Mary Dorcey
Born1950
County Dublin, Ireland
OccupationWriter, Poet
NationalityIrish
Alma materOpen University

Mary Dorcey (born 1950) is an Irish poet, novelist and short story writer. 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.

She was the first Irish woman to write and speak in support of gay rights in her own name in Ireland. 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[1] 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[1][2][3]

She has published six collections of poetry, one novel, one collection of short stories and one novella.[2]

Dorcey was the first woman in Irish history (1974 to the present) to advocate for LGBTI rights, in person and print, throughout Ireland and internationally. She was a founder member of Irish Women United, Women for Radical Change and The Movement for Sexual Liberation.[1][4]

She has lived and worked in the United States, England, France, Spain and Japan.[5][6]

Recognition[]

Dorcey won the [[Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 1990 for her short story collection A Noise from the Woodshed.[1][2][3] 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.'[2]

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, 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.[2][7]

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.'[1][2][3]

She has won five major awards for literature from the Arts Council of Ireland: 1990, 1995, 1999 and 2005 and 2008.[2]

Themes[]

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.[1][4]

  • Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women's Issues .One of the first was Angela Carter: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1981).Well-known authors, including Mary Dorcey, Maeve Binchy, Zoé Fairbanks, ... Finally, the self is transformed and begins to love and value from a center ...Cheris Kramarae, Dale Spender - 2004 - Reference..https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1135963150,

Bibliography[]

Poetry[]

  • Kindling (London, Onlywomen Press, 1989)
  • Moving into The Space Cleared by our Mothers (Salmon Poetry, 1991)
  • The River That Carries Me (Salmon Poetry 1995)
  • Like Joy in Season, Like Sorrow. ('Salmon Poetry, 2001)
  • Perhaps the heart is Constant After All. (Salmon Poetry, 2012)
  • To Air the Soul, Throw All the Windows Wide. (Salmon Poetry 2016) New and Selected Poetry.

Books, essays and short stories[]

  • A Noise from the Woodshed: Short Stories (London, Onlywomen Press, 1989)
  • Scarlet O'Hara (in the anthology In and Out of Time) (London. Onlywomen Press, 1990)
  • Biography of Desire (Dublin, Poolbeg 1997)
  • A Glorious Day (The Faber Book Of Best New Irish Short Stories 2006–2007 By David Marcus)
  • The Lift Home(Virgins and Hyacinths, Ed. Caroline Walsh.1993.)
  • The Orphan;' (In Sunshine or in Shadow) Ed. Mary Maher. 1999.

Staged dramatisations[]

  • In the Pink (The Raving Beauties)
  • Sunny Side Plucked(Dublin, Project Arts Centre)

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Gonzalez, Alexander G. (2006). Irish women writers: an A-to-Z guide. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 102. ISBN 0-313-32883-8.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g "Aosdana Biography". Aosdana. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Irish writers online". Irish writers online. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b Heather Ingman (2007). Twentieth-century Fiction by Irish Women: Nation and Gender. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
  5. ^ Murphy, Lizz (1996). Wee girls:Women writing from an Irish perspective. Spinifex Press. p. 11. ISBN 9781875559510.
  6. ^ "Oxford Reference biography".
  7. ^ Stephanie Norgate (2013). Poetry and Voice: A Book of Essays. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 275.

Further reading[]

  • Naomi HolochKnopf (2010). The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction. Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 368.

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

  • Twentieth Century Literature by Irish Women: Nation and Genderhttps://books.google.com/books?isbn=0754635384

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...

  • 'The following article aims to examine Mary Dorcey's poem “Come Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear,” included in the 1991 volume 'Moving into the Space Cleared by Our Mothers.'

Katarzyna Poloczek, University of Łódź: 'Women's Power To Be Loud.' 1

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