fiction.wikisort.org - Writer

She has been described as a lyric poet who celebrates the life of the emotions and the senses, she is also a feminist and an activist. She speaks of her fiction as exploring the intimate space between social structures and individual imagination.

Mary Dorcey
Born	1950 County Dublin, Ireland
Occupation	Writer, Poet
Nationality	Irish
Alma mater	Open University

Mary Dorcey, the author of ten books, is an Irish poet, novelist and short story writer. "Life Holds Its Breath." her latest collection was published this year, 2022 by Salmon Poetry.  An elected member of Aosdana: the Irish Academy of Artists and Writers, 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. Her collection" New and Selected Poems" was published by Salmon Poetry in 2017.

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 seven collections of poetry, one novel, one collection of short stories and one novella.[2]

Dorcey is recognised as a forerunner of the gay and lesbian rights movement in Ireland.[1] She was a founder member of Irish Women United, Women for Radical Change and The Movement for Sexual Liberation.[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, Britain, 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]

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]

Mary Dorcey - The Irish Timeshttps://www.irishtimes.com › tags › mary-dorcey RTÉ chairwoman and Riverdance co-founder is the first woman awarded the RDS gold medal for enterprise. Most Read.

Poetry reviews: Seán Lysaght, Grace Wells, Mary Dorcey 'Life Holds Its Breath.' and ...https://www.irishtimes.com › culture › books › 2022/06/12 14 Jun 2022 — This is a book filled with the voices and sounds of the landscape. The rain “humming on the dormer roof at night”, “the caress and argument of ...

Voices from over here and Down Under - The Irish Timeshttps://www.irishtimes.com › culture › voices-from-over-... 25 Mar 1997 — Irish based writers in Wee Girls include Maeve Binchy, Medbh McGuckian, Rita Ann Higgins and Mary Dorcey, while the voices from the Antipodes ...

Free to choose - The Irish Timeshttps://www.irishtimes.com › free-to-choose-1.108356 20 Sept 1997 — Mary Dorcey's first is arguably the first truly erotic Irish novel. Full of courageous and challenging writing, Biography of Desire is ...

How same-sex sexual activity ceased to be a criminal acthttps://www.irishtimes.com › life-and-style › people › ho... 23 Jun 2018 — Those people were Ruth Riddick, Mary Dorcey, Margaret McWilliam, ... In 1975, the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform began, with Mary ...

AN IRISHMAN'S DIARY - The Irish Timeshttps://www.irishtimes.com › opinion › an-irishman-s-diar... 8 Apr 1996 — By DONAL DORCEY ... Mary Kiersey (nee Curran), my grandmother, told me many times ... It was an exciting, but frustrating, time for her.

• 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.
• "Life Holds Its Breath. (Salmon Poetry 2022.)

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.
• " The Fate of Aoife and the Children of Lir" Feminist Faery Tales. ed. Maeve Binchy.
• "Adrienne." 'Queer Whispers' anthology ed. Paul McVeigh.

Staged dramatisations

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

See also

• Lesbian Poetry

References

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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