Kilkenny writers selected for National Mentoring Programme

Local writers, Nuala Roche and Caoileann O’Mahony, have been selected by the Irish Writers Centre to receive professional literary mentoring over the next eight months from an acclaimed Irish writer of their choice.

After a national call out, 37 writers have been selected from a total of over three hundred applicants.

County Kilkenny Arts Office funded the literary mentorship along with the Arts Council of Ireland to guarantee that the best applicant from the county would be selected. Their support will ensure that the chosen mentee receives this potentially life-changing support free of charge. It is also an investment in the long-term literary reputation of the region.

The mentoring process involves four meetings between the selected ‘mentee’ and their chosen professional writer. In advance of each meeting, the mentor reads up to 10,000 words / 180 lines of poetry of the awarded mentee’s writing, then shares their critical feedback and advice.

Nuala Roche writes poetry and fiction and more recently, creative non-fiction. She won Dromineer Festival’s 2017 Poetry Prize and her chapbook was Highly Commended in the Patrick Kavanagh Competition. For stage she wrote and presented the play Bridie at The Watergate Theatre and a women’s monologues show at Cleere’s Theatre. Her work is published in The Cormorant Broadsheets Anthology, Doghouse Press, The Milk House, Pendemic.ie and Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheets. Her poem, Lumber, was nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize.

Caoileann O’Mahony is a Kilkenny-based writer with a love of all things science fiction and fantasy. Originally from Dublin, where she completed a BA in English Literature and an M Phil in Popular Literature, she’s currently working on a fantasy novel and is very excited to have won a place on the National Mentoring Programme.

The Irish Writers Centre’s mission is to support a vibrant and diverse community of writers of all types and talents to develop their craft, capacity and confidence to thrive as a writer in the world. The hope is that the chosen mentees will go on to write great works of literature to match or best the quality of their mentors.

It’s a form of peer to peer teaching that is increasingly popular in literature, formalizing the process whereby masters pass on their craft to students.

Running since 2017, the national mentoring programme has already numerous published authors among its

alumni, including Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, Fiona Scarlett, and Victoria Kennefick.