Recipients of the 2022 National Mentoring Programme

Fingal County Council Arts Office partnered with the Irish Writers Centre to provide professional development opportunities to support Fingal writers through the National Mentoring Programme. Four Fingal writers, Aoife Sheehan, Anita Bonesteel, Elizabeth Brennan and Hayley Carr have been selected by the Irish Writers Centre to receive professional literary mentoring over the next eight months from an acclaimed Irish writer of their choice.  Fingal Arts Office funded the literary mentorship along with the Arts Council of Ireland. This mentoring opportunity will ensure that the chosen mentees will receive potentially life-changing support. It is also an investment in the long-term literary reputation of the region.

Writers Biographies 

Anita Bonesteel is a Visual Effects artist and lecturer. She holds an MFA from the University of Ulster and received a commendation from the Irish Writers Centre for Novel Fair 2022. She was a winner in the International Literature Festivals ‘Date with an Agent’ (2019) and received a Royal Television Award for her work on the short film ‘Robots Need Not Apply’.

Aoife Sheehan completed her BA in English Literature at Trinity College Dublin, where she continued to complete her master's in children's literature. Turning to writing for young adults, she was a runner up in the Irish Writers Centre's Novel Fair 2022 before becoming a mentee in their National Mentoring Programme.

Elizabeth Brennan is a writer living in Donabate. Her work has been published in TOLKA, Profiles (forthcoming), Prole, Crannog, The Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction (ed. Dermot Bolger and Ciaran Carty), the Irish Independent and broadcast on RTE's The Book on One. She is a two-time recipient of a literature bursary from Fingal County Council and was a previous mentee on the national mentorship programme.

Hayley Carr is a writer from Dublin. She has been published twice in The Stinging Fly, and most recently in Banshee. Her work is heavily influenced by technology and internet culture and focuses on drawing the reader’s attention to their own interactions and relationships with digital spaces.

About the Irish Writers Centre

As the leading support and development organisation for writers since 1991, the Irish Writers Centre carries out its work, online and in person, on an all island basis. The Centre works with writers of all types and talents, and actively encourages writers from all communities to engage in creative writing. It provides many ways and means for them to develop their skill, advance their ambitions and join a vibrant and diverse community of people who share their passion and purpose.

The IWC is also a membership organisation, always seeking new opportunities for members to grow as writers and to connect with each other through IWC programmes and supports.