Trinity College Dublin and Pembroke College Cambridge are delighted to announce that Claire Keegan is the 2021 Briena Staunton Visiting Fellow. The fellowship has been generously endowed by Clinical Professor in Radiology James Meaney in memory of his aunt, Briena Staunton. Following an agreement between the two Colleges, a leading international writer, nominated alternately by Trinity and Pembroke, will spend a month writing and supporting students in Dublin or Cambridge. This year Trinity nominated Claire Keegan an international award-winning short story writer, who will spend March 2021 in Cambridge.

Claire is an Irish writer whose stories have been published in English by Faber & Faber, have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, Best American Stories, won numerous awards – and are translated into 17 languages.  She is internationally renowned as a teacher of creative writing. 

Claire’s debut collection of stories, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. The Observer called these stories: ‘Among the finest recently written in English’. It was also awarded the William Trevor Prize, judged by William Trevor. 

In 2007, her second collection, Walk the Blue Fields, was published to huge critical acclaim and went on to win The Edge Hill Prize for the strongest collection published in The British Isles. The prize was adjudicated by Hilary Mantel. 

Foster (2010) won The Davy Byrnes Award, then the world’s richest prize for a story. It judged by Richard Ford: “Keegan is a rarity-someone I will always want to read’.”