|
Life
1962- [occas. Eibhear]; b. Waterford; educ. De La Salle College, Waterford, and UCD; Snr. Lect. Modern English at UCC; issued a literary biography of Kate O’Brien (2006) and edited Ordinary People Dancing: Essays on Kate O’Brien (1993); also edited critical collections, Sex, Nation and Dissent (1997) and Elizabeth Bowen Remembered (Dublin 1999), Representing the Troubles (2004), and Molly Keane: Centenary Essays (2006); issued a Oscar’s Shadow: Wilde, Homosexuality and Modern Ireland (2011); also Cissie’s Abattoir (2009), a widely-praised childhood memoir which was broadcast on RTÉ, and Mary Traver’s Diary (2013), a novel based on the Travers-Wilde trial of 1864; issued A Different Story: The Writings of Colm Tóibín (2013)
[ top ]
Works| Monographs |
|
| Edited collections |
|
| Scholarly editions |
|
| Autobiography |
|
Bibliographical details
Imagination in the Classroom: Teaching and Learning Creative Writing in Ireland, ed. Walshe, Anne Fogarty and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne (Dublin: Four Courts Press [2013]), 150pp. Contents: Gerald Dawe, ‘The history and practice of the teaching of creative writing in Ireland’; Roddy Doyle, ‘Write first, worry later: fostering creativity in the classroom’; Sinéad Morrissey, ‘On theft: teaching poetry composition to undergraduates’ Leanne O’Sullivan, ‘Beginnings: becoming a teacher of creative writing’; Paul Perry, ‘Imaginative constellations: the creative writing workshop as laboratory’; Carlo Gebler, ‘“The helmet that never was”: reflections on fiction and life writing’; Nessa O’Mahony, ‘Virtual worlds: teaching creative writing in an online environment’; Eibhear Walshe, ‘“The man in the moon’s autobiography”: memoir and the creative writing workshop’; Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, ‘Ars longa, vita brevis: the novel, the workshop and time’; Mary O’Donnell, ‘Writing as process: truth and sincerity in the poetry workshop’; James Ryan, ‘What we talk about when we talk about talking: writing dialogue in the novel and short story’; Mary Morrissy, ‘Grading creativity’.
[ top ]
Notes
Sex, Nation and Dissent (1997): contributors incl. Declan Kiberd, Patricia Coughlan, Anne Fogarty and David Alderson treat of the Irish writers Oscar Wilde, Somerville and Ross, Eva Gore-Booth, Forrest Reid, Kate O’Brien, Michael Macliammoir, Mary Dorcey and Elizabeth Bowen - as well as areas such as popular fiction, Gaelic poetry, Irish cinema and Irish theatre.
Cissie’s Abattoir (2009): Cissie Hamm, free-spirited and glamorous, once served early-morning coffee to Jackie Kennedy Onassis and believed that housework consisted of matching belts to the correct coats. A ray of light in the puddle-grey town of Waterford in the 1960s and 1970s, she was both abattoir-owner and guest-house landlady. She was exactly what every self-proclaimed nancy boy needs in his life. Aeibhear’s personal voyage takes us through the buildings of his childhood city, his grandmother’s abattoir, the mental hospital where his father works, and the Folly Church where he serves as an altar boy. It is the story of a city and the story of his journey from fear to pride. But the most important character throughout is the entertaining, fashion-conscious, poker-playing Cissie, his lively and witty little grandmother. She taught him by example how to survive and prosper, and how to live with style and verve. [Publisher’s notice.]
From the book: ‘Living happily on the edge of Cissie’s life all through my childhood had been all that I had wanted, but it, amongst other things, meant that I could never talk to the very ones I now longed for: boys of my own age. At the core of my dawning understanding of sex and romance was the absolute certainty that I would always be outside it, undesired, unwanted. I could imagine sex between men quite easily; I just couldn’t imagine ever being involved in it. In this disturbing world of unfulfillable desire, I was scared. Cissie’s abattoir saved me.’ (COPAC Notice - online.)
The Diary of Mary Travers (Somerville Press 2103) - a novel which opens with Mary Travers, the protagonist in the Travers-Wilde libel case of 1864, taking notice of Oscar Wilde’s homosexuality libel trial of 1896 which ‘eclipsed the story of the angry, wronged girl and her attempt to gain justice in a Dublin courtroom’ - a trial which ‘fascinated’ Walshe and ‘led me into fiction’. (See Walshe, ‘The other Wilde trial: the Mary Travers libel case’, in The Irish Times, Weekend Review, 6 Dec. 2014, and further details under William Wilde, supra.)
[ top ]