Mary Dorcey

Mary Dorcey (born 1950) is an Irish poet,novelist and short story writer. 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.
She was the first Irish woman to write and speak in support of gay rights in her own name in Ireland.
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 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
She has published six collections of poetry, one novel, one collection of short stories and one novella.
Dorcey was the first woman in Irish history (1974 to the present) to advocate for LGBTI rights, in person and print, throughout Ireland and internationally. She was a founder member of Irish Women United, Women for Radical Change and The Movement for Sexual Liberation.
She has lived and worked in the United States, England, France, Spain and Japan.
Recognition.
Dorcey won the [[Rooney Prize for Irish Literature]in 1990 for her short story collection "A Noise from the Woodshed".
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.' 
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, 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.
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 ([[Raidió Teilifís Éireann|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.'
She has won five major awards for literature from the Arts Council of Ireland: 1990, 1995, 1999 and 2005 and 2008.
Themes.
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.
Further reading.
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
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...
Katarzyna Poloczek, University of Łódź: 'Women's Power To Be Loud.'
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[[Category:1950 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Aosdána members]]
[[Category:Irish novelists]]
[[Category:Irish poets]]
[[Category:Irish women short story writers]]
[[Category:Irish short story writers]]
[[Category:Irish women poets]]
[[Category:Lesbian writers]]
[[Category:LGBT writers from Ireland]]
[[Category:20th-century Irish writers]]
[[Category:21st-century Irish writers]]
[[Category:LGBT novelists]]
[[Category:Irish women novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century Irish women writers]]
[[Category:21st-century Irish women writers]]
[[Category:20th-century short story writers]]
[[Category:21st-century short story writers]]
[[Category:Alumni of the Open University]]