The Trinity Long Room Hub is delighted to announce the establishment of the Rooney Writer Fellowship, which was launched on 4 October 2021 by Dr Peter Rooney, Director of the Rooney Prize Foundation. The Fellowship will enable a creative writer to join the research community in the Hub and to engage with the institute’s many research projects and initiatives. The inaugural Fellow is Caitríona Lally, who will take up her position in January 2022.
A graduate of Trinity’s School of English, Caitríona Lally is the author of the prize-winning novel Eggshells (2017), and of Wunderland, published in September 2021 and already receiving high praise from reviewers. Caitríona was the recipient of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature (2018) and a Lannan Fellowship for Fiction (2019). She also writes short stories and essays, and is currently working on a screenplay.
Announcing the Fellowship, Dr Rooney said: ‘I have always had a great love for literature and believe in supporting the Arts, so I’m delighted to be able to create this Fellowship at the Hub and foster a phenomenal talent like Caitríona Lally. Caitríona is truly one of the great voices of contemporary Irish Literature, and she will add a unique perspective to the excellent research being done by Trinity’s Arts and Humanities scholars.’
I have always had a great love for literature and believe in supporting the Arts, so I’m delighted to be able to create this Fellowship at the Hub and foster a phenomenal talent like Caitríona Lally.
Dr Peter Rooney
Professor Eve Patten, Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub, welcomed the establishment of the Rooney Writer Fellowship and said: ‘I am extremely grateful to Dr Rooney for his generous endorsement of the work we do in the Trinity Long Room Hub, and for recognising our commitment to putting imaginative communication and creative expression at the heart of our research. Caitríona Lally is a superb writer and I know she will bring a distinctive and original voice to the Hub’s community.’
The announcement of the new Fellowship was made at the ceremony for the 2021 Rooney Prize for Literature at Trinity, and Professor Patten added her warmest congratulations to this year’s winner, Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy.
About Caitríona
Caitríona Lally’s first novel Eggshells, was published in the US by Melville House (2017) and in the UK by Borough Press (2018). Caitríona lives in Dublin and divides her time between her young children, writing and working in the housekeeping department at Trinity College Dublin. Wunderland is her second novel.
In June 2020, Caitríona wrote about her experiences of cleaning an empty university during a pandemic for the Trinity Long Room Hub’s Covid-19 blog series. Read this piece, here.