News Release: Hamilton, Bermuda – The Department of Community and Cultural Affairs will host the Writer’s In Residence event at the Bermuda National Gallery on Wednesday evening (September 11), with featured writer is Bermudian Dr Paul Maddern.
Dr Maddern has won two Bermuda Government Literary Awards, for The Beachcomber’s Report (Templar, 2010) and Pilgrimage (Templar, 2017). His latest collection, The Tipping Line (Templar, 2018), involves extensive research into Bermudian soldiers who fought and died in WWI.
He holds a PhD from the School of English, Queen’s University Belfast, and has taught Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre (Queen’s, Belfast), Leeds University and Edinburgh University. Several of his students have gone on to publish novels and poetry collections.
As an added note, Jane Downing’s writing works will also be featured.
Ms Downing is the Registrar at the Bermuda National Museum. Her work has previously been published in The Bermuda Anthology of Poetry, An Isle So Long Unknown and The Caribbean Writer.
The Minister of Labour, Community Affairs and Sports, Lovitta Foggo will formally welcome attendees to the event and the Department encourages interested individuals to attend the event which will feature literary and poetry readings from the writers.
- Background: The Writer In Residence programme features internationally renowned writers brought to Bermuda to conduct a workshop on a specific genre. This year, the featured writers are Bermudians. Members of the public with an interest in writing have the opportunity to explore the genre, which has already shown to have resulted in an increase in the quality and quantity of local writing. In addition to the workshop itself, there are typically two mini-workshops for school students and one public reading. This year, the focus is on incorporating historical research into creative writing
