Mary Moynihan MA

Writer of Novels, Poetry, Films, Plays

Creator of Art and Photography

Creative Reflections on Arts, Creativity, Equality, Leadership and Self-Esteem

Mary Moynihan, MA, she/her, is an award-winning author of novels, poetry, films and plays, and a creator of art and photography. Mary is from Dublin, Ireland. Mary embarked upon her award-winning career as a writer in theatre and film and has garnered much acclaim for her plays, poetry and short film scripts, and for creating interdisciplinary artworks combining writing and photography presented in galleries and online. She established and became Artistic Director of Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and is Artistic Curator for the annual Dublin Arts and Human Rights festival. Mary has an honours BA in Drama and Theatre Studies from Trinity College Dublin and an honours Masters in Film Production from TU Dublin.

After raising four children, now adults, Mary dedicated her time to becoming a writer. She writes fiction for young people and adults featuring stories of courage, laughter, tragedy, happiness, love, death and action-packed adventures. Mary is the author of a young adult fantasy novel Amergin and the Warriors of Zen. In her adult fiction, Mary’s characters are clever, fearless, vulnerable, crazy, strong, and dangerous, looking for love, fun, success and happiness. Her work promises enthralling plots, dramatic lives, lots of laughs, serious flirting and sexual intrigue and insights into love, happiness, creativity and meaning in life.

Mary pens a series of articles titled Creative Reflections on Arts, Creativity, Leadership and Self-Esteem which appear in the Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality newsletter and on Mary’s website marymoynihan.ie

In her free time Mary loves to spend time with her four adult children and hang out with friends.  She swims in the sea all year round. She loves the ocean, sky and moon and has a spiritual connection to the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea, to the environs of Dublin bay and to the mystical landscapes of Valentia Island and the surrounding Iveragh peninsula in County Kerry, her spiritual home. She is a big fan of the Dublin Gaelic football and hurling teams.

Smashing Times

Mary is Artistic Director of Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality working collaboratively with artists and over fifty organisations across Ireland, Northern Ireland, Europe and internationally, using the arts to promote rights and values for all. Company patrons are Sabina Higgins; Joan Freeman, founder of Pieta House; Ger Ryan, actor and Tim Pat Coogan, writer and historian. Founding patrons were writers Maeve Binchy and Brian Friel.

Mary is Artistic Curator for the annual, international Dublin Arts and Human Rights festival implemented by Smashing Times and Front Line Defenders with Amnesty International, Fighting Words, ICCL, NWCI, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Trócaire, Poetry Ireland and Irish Pen, and funded by The Arts Council. The festival highlights the extraordinary work of human rights defenders in Ireland and around the world, past and present, and the role of the arts and artists in promoting human rights today.

Awards

Mary’s work has won a number of awards, including the Allianz Business to Arts Special Judges DAA Arts Award at Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, the international and prestigious #ArtsAgainstCovid award from the Arts in Health International Foundation and an Arts Council Agility Award. Mary was awarded a Project Award from The Arts Council to write a new work with a range of collaborators titled The Feeling Soul, inspired by stories of women poets from ancient and modern Ireland.   

Writer of Novels, Poetry, Films and Plays

Mary is the author of the epic spoken word poem  ‘Ode to a Coolock Queen’’, written from a female perspective and exploring identity, gender, violence, passion, self-destruction and possible redemption. An attempt as Sylvia Plath says  ‘to be true to my own weirdnesses’. It is an oral storytelling narrative that is about a broader reflection on what it is to be born out of a working class environment.  This poem is in homage to all people from working-class communities who find their strength and become their own kings and queens like warriors from an ancient past.

Mary is the author of a young adult fantasy novel Amergin and the Warriors of Zen. As a playwright, Mary’s work includes the highly acclaimed The Woman is Present: Women’s Stories of WWII co-written with Paul Kennedy, Fiona Thompson and Féilim James; Memorial Monologues: The Path of Memory; Tales of Love and Loss featuring two monologues selected by President Michael D Higgins for performance at Áras an Uachtaráin, Constance and Her Friends and Grace and Joe for performance in 2023; In One Breath from the award-winning Testimonies(co-written with Paul Kennedy); Shadow of My Soul and May Our Faces Haunt You.

Plays for children and young people include Gathering on the Pond, a comedy play on the environment by Mary Moynihan and Aoife Reilly;  Love the Earth by Mary Moynihan – A Change-Makers Storytelling session for ages 5 to 12 years adapted from three stories – The Water Princess, The Hummingbird, and The Salmon of Knowledge – from Goal’s Global Citizenship Education Resource; and Four Great Plays for Young Children, a series of short plays suitable for performance by children ages 5 to 12 years – The Children of Lir, The Three Bears, The Princess Play and Legend of the Dragon Kings

Mary has a focus on using historical memory in her artistic practice as inspiration for the creation of original artworks. A number of her writings highlight stories of ordinary yet extraordinary women who stood up for the rights of others with a focus on the Holocaust, WWII and the revolutionary period in Irish history.

Mary’s documentary film work includes The Shoah: A Survivor’s Memory – The World’s Legacy, adapted from the writings of French woman Simone Veil (1927-2017), a French lawyer, politician and feminist, Holocaust survivor and first female President of the European Parliament; the creative documentary Women in an Equal Europe; the short film Letter to a Human Rights Defender based on words by Mary Lawlor, a Human Rights Defender, founder of Front Line Defenders and UN Ambassador on Human Rights Defenders; the hour-long documentary Stories from the Shadows reflecting on the arts in peacebuilding in Northern Ireland (co-directed with Mark Quinn);  You Matter, a filmed interview with social justice campaigner Dil Wickremasinhge and the short documentary Acting for the Future on the role of the arts to promote positive mental health and well-being and suicide prevention for Travellers in Ireland.

Keep in touch with Mary on:

Tel: + 00 353 (0) 87 7438722

Email: marymoynihanarts@gmail.com

Website: MaryMoynihan.ie

Follow Mary on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn

Jessica Traynor, poet, essayist, librettist, and poetry editor at Banshee, 2023 Arts Council Writer in Residence in Galway University, Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival Ambassador

Jessica Traynor is a poet, essayist, librettist, and poetry editor at Banshee. Her debut collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award. The Quick (Dedalus Press, 2018) was an Irish Times book of the year. Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe, 2022) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was an Irish Times book of the year, and a Guardian Best Summer Read of 2022. It was shortlisted for the Yeats Society Sligo/ Irish Independent Poetry Prize.

She is 2023 recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. Other awards include the Ireland Chair of Poetry Prize, the Listowel Poetry Prize, and Hennessy New Writer of the Year.  She is a Creative Fellow of UCD, and 2023 Arts Council Writer in Residence in Galway University. She is a judge for the 2023 Forward Prizes and a poetry critic for The Irish Times.

As a dramaturg, Jessica has worked as Literary Manager of the Abbey Theatre. She now offers dramaturgical support on a project by project basis. 

MayKay, singer, songwriter, TV presenter, voiceover artist, Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival Ambassador

MayKay is a singer, songwriter, TV presenter and voiceover artist.

As lead singer of Fight Like Apes – named by The Irish Times as one of the best Irish musical acts of their generation – MayKay toured the world with The Prodigy and supported the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “Almost going into Debbie Harry territory,” she has wowed crowds at festivals across Europe and the US including South by Southwest and Glastonbury. Fight Like Apes returned this year and are playing numerous sold out shows.

MayKay has collaborated with musicians Duke Special, Jerry Fish and award-winning Irish electronic quintet, Le Galaxie, who she joined as front woman in 2017, ahead of the worldwide release of their third album. She has co written on albums with Le Galaxie, Elaine Mai, DJ Kormac and many other acclaimed artists.

Since 2015, MayKay has presented Ireland’s leading live music series Other Voices – along with BBC presenters Annie Mac and Huw Stephens – and interviewed artists including Little Simz, David Gray and Snow Patrol. She regularly MCs and moderates events including the SXSW send-off show hosted by the US Embassy in Dublin and the Matt Talbot Centre fundraiser in Vicar Street.

MayKay played the lead character in an animation aired in 2021. She spent lockdown collaborating on several different musical projects, including her first solo album, due to be released in 2023. She will debut her tracks at Ireland Music Week this October.

In the past 2 years she has made 2 trips as part of truck convoys to deliver humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and has just returned from her 2nd volunteer trip to Aida Camp in the occupied West Bank in Palestine, where she will return on an annual basis to volunteer in the Lajee Centre.

Jessica Traynor, poet, essayist, librettist, and poetry editor at Banshee, 2023 Arts Council Writer in Residence in Galway University, Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival Ambassador

Jessica Traynor is a poet, essayist, librettist, and poetry editor at Banshee. Her debut collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award. The Quick (Dedalus Press, 2018) was an Irish Times book of the year. Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe, 2022) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was an Irish Times book of the year, and a Guardian Best Summer Read of 2022. It was shortlisted for the Yeats Society Sligo/ Irish Independent Poetry Prize.

She is 2023 recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. Other awards include the Ireland Chair of Poetry Prize, the Listowel Poetry Prize, and Hennessy New Writer of the Year.  She is a Creative Fellow of UCD, and 2023 Arts Council Writer in Residence in Galway University. She is a judge for the 2023 Forward Prizes and a poetry critic for The Irish Times.

As a dramaturg, Jessica has worked as Literary Manager of the Abbey Theatre. She now offers dramaturgical support on a project by project basis. 

Josephine Patane is excited to be a part of the Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival. Originally from the United States, she has performed in many New York and regional theatre productions there. Since moving, Josephine has continued performing on stages throughout Europe as an actor and singer. Theatre credits include: The Little Mermaid (Vanessa) Fiddler on the Roof (Chava) The Shadow of a Gunman (Minnie Powell) Twinkle Tames a Dragon (Twinkle) and Richard II (Northumberland.) On screen, Josephine can be seen in the film Happy Yummy Chicken, or doing science experiments on BBC Bitesize.

Daniel Mahon is a graduate of The Lir Academy. Graduating from The Three Year Bachelor in Acting in 2022.

Stage credits include ‘EXIT> PURSUED BY A PINT’ a new play by Kat Ennis for Scene and Heard Festival 2023,  the role of ‘The Black O’Donnell’ in the Quintessence Theatre/An Taín production of INTO THE DARK and the role of ‘Patrick Hogan’ in ANU Productions’ STAGING THE TREATY at the National Concert Hall which was also screened at the IFI and streamed on RTÉ’s website and IFI@Home.

While at The Lir he played, Francois ‘Franz/Frank’ Lafayette in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ APPROPRIATE directed by Joy Nesbitt; Barnardine & Froth in Shakespeare’s MEASURE FOR MEASURE directed by Joe Dowling; John Morris in Kate O’Brien’s DISTINGUISHED VILLA directed by Hilary Wood; Vladimir in Chekov’s THREE SISTERS directed by Marc Atkinson Borrull and Dr. Gibbs in Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN directed by Wayne Jordan.

His Scene Credits include Paul in the IFTA-nominated feature WHO WE LOVE directed by Graham Cantwell; the short film WAITING directed by Sinéad O’Louglin at The Lir, and the role of Eddie in Pancake Studios’ short film NEVER ALONE.

Lisa Mc Loughlin-Gnemmi is a graduate of the Royal College of Music, London where she received her B.Mus Hons degree. She is a lecturer in violin at the TU Dublin Conservatoire for Music and Drama. She gained her masters in performance at TU Dublin studying under Joanna Matkowska. She has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland under conductors Alexander Anissimov, George Hurst and Gerhardt Markson. She also worked with Lyric Opera and The Irish Film Orchestra. She has regularly performed with the RTE Concert Orchestra.

Performances with the RTECO include a chamber music recital for the commemoration of the 1916 rising at The Irish Museum of Modern Art in the presence of An t-Uachtarán and with a group of members of the RTECO playing a new composition by Simon O’ Connor narrated by actress Olwen Fouéré. Other concerts included ‘Back to the Future’, ‘The Godfather’ with film music by Nino Rota, ‘The Music of John Williams’ film music and RTECO’s recording of the music of Steve Mc Keon for the film ‘Norm of the North’.

Lisa has performed at the Dublin Metropolis Festival, RDS and at The Button Factory, Temple Bar with DJ Kormac. Lisa has also toured France, South Africa and the US as solo violinist with Michael Flatley’s ‘Lord of the Dance’. Solo and chamber music recitals include DIT, Trinity College Dublin, The Goethe institute, UCD and The John Field Room, N.C.H. and The Galway Arts Festival.

Lisa recently performed at Dublin Castle for a production of ‘Constance and her Friends’ a play about Constance Markievicz and activists during the 1916 rising written by Mary Moynihan and performed by Smashing Times. Passionate about teaching as well as performing, Lisa gives masterclasses, prepares students for exams, recitals and Feis Ceoil competitions. Lisa is married to oboist with the National Symphony Orchestra, Sylvain Gnemmi. They have four children and live in Dublin.