Centre Director and Tutor

Pauline Clooney is an award-winning author and experienced creative writing workshop facilitator.

Pauline’s writing achievements include:

•  Recipient of 2024 Freedom to write 2024 award from The John Hewitt Society, Irish Pen and the Irish Foreign Ministry.
• Winner of the Dingle Literary Festival Short Story competition 2024.
• Shortlisted for the QuietManDave flash fiction 2022 competition in association with Manchester Metropolitan University, School of Writing.
• 2022 Recipient of an Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland.
• In October 2021, her novel, Charlotte and Arthur, was published by Merdog Books. This bio fiction is a reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s honeymoon in Ireland.
• Pauline is the 2021 recipient of the Dennis O'Driscoll Literary Bursary for Professional writers with Kildare County Council.
• Her short stories are published in; an anthology of stories associated with historical houses of Great Britain entitled Come into the House: Tales of Secrets, History, and Mystery, in the 2017 Ireland's Own Anthology of Short Stories, and in The RTE Guide and HCE Review, Arts and Literary Journal
• In 2015 Pauline won the Penguin Ireland/ RTE Guide Short Story competition with her entry entitled Beautiful Things in his Head.
• In 2020, Pauline was a runner up in the Irish Writer’s Centre Novel Fair, with her first novel, The Eternal Rocks Beneath, which has yet to be published.
• In 2019 Pauline was one of sixty writers out of five hundred selected to have a Date with an Agent as part of the Dublin International Literature festival.
• In 2018 and 2017 Pauline was awarded the Tyrone Guthrie Bursary from Kildare County Council.
• Pauline was placed second in the Doolin Short Story competition (2015).  Third in Bray Literary Festival FF competition (2019)
• Her stories have been shortlisted for the RTE Guide/Penguin Ireland Short Story competition (2014), the Doolin Short Story competition (2014), and the Hennessey New Irish Writing in association with the Irish Times (2017 and 2018). Allingham Flash Fiction Comp. (2019)
• Her stories have been longlisted for the inaugural Colm Tóibín Short Story Competition (2016), the Fish Short Memoir competition (2014), and the Fish Publishing International Short Story Prize (2015 and 2018).

Academic Awards:

• In 2007 Pauline was awarded an honours M.Litt in English Literature from National University, Maynooth. Her researched thesis was entitled Demythologising Charlotte Brontë: An Exploration of The Genesis and Evolution of the Author
• In 2015 Pauline was awarded a first-class honours MA in Creative Writing from UCD. The course content for this Masters addressed both creative work and academic literary criticism.

Work experience.

• Creative Writing facilitator with:
  • Irish Writers Centre https://irishwriterscentre.ie/ 
• The Power of Words Festival 2021. https://powerofwords.ie/workshopinfo
  • Doolin Writers Weekend 2020 https://www.doolinfestivals.ie/writers-artists-bios/item/122-pauline-clooney.html
  • Kildare Reader’s Festival 2019 
  • June Fest 2019 
  • Laois Bealtaine Festival 2018 https://www.laoistoday.ie/2018/04/11/laois-arthouse-to-host-free-writing-workshop-with-renowned-author/ 
  • Laois Connect Mental Health awareness week 2017 https://www.laoistoday.ie/2017/10/03/laois-connects-positive-mental-health-week/ 
• Founder, Creative Writing Director, and teacher at the Kildare Writing Centre, 2016-2021.

Current Writing Project:

Pauline is currently working on two projects:

o A short story collection

o Her second historical novel, this time looking at the first visit of W.B Yeats to America 1903/1904.