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

Hina was born in born in Pakistan in 1980 and completed an MFA, majoring in Miniature Painting from Pakistan. Hina’s work uses a mixture of traditional and innovative techniques in miniatures. She portrays social issues, immigration, humanitarian crises like prostitution, gender discrimination, gender restrictions, trauma, child abuse and killing  in her work.

Hina uses  miniature in her work as the  intricacy and delicacy of the brush work has a unique identity. Hina’s work began as a mixture of traditional and contemporary miniature and her practice has now expanded to include small and large-scale installation, videos and 3D.

According to Hina ‘My work is a constant search for the best way to interpret ideas and to express my own ideologies through symbolism.  I am creating a dialogue through my art. My art is a reflection of inner connection, and how immigrants and nomadic artists are a part of this land. Migration is deeply rooted in my blood. I have carried two cultures, one from where I was born and the other is this culture where I am trying to re-root myself. Sometimes a situation is not in our control, but life always takes us on different voyages. This journey has built up a constant transition in my art, personality, and in terms of experimentation, enabling me to evolve my artistic practice.’

Hina has participated in a number of groups shows in Pakistan from 2002 to 2011. Hina came to Ireland in 2015 and participated in a number of exhibitions in Dublin, Laois, Mayo, and Cork. Hina was awarded several residencies with Fire Station Arts Center, Create Ireland, West Cork Art Center and Cow House Studio and has displayed solo exhibitions at Ballina Art Center, Mayo, and Stradbally Art house, Laois.

Hina’s art pieces are held in the permanent collection of The Arts Council of Ireland. She is the recipient of several awards from The Arts Council of Ireland, Create Ireland, and from different counties. She is the recipient of an R&D award from Create Ireland in collaboration with Tomasz Madajezak under the mentorship of Jesse Jones and is also collaborating with filmmaker David Bickley. Currently she is preparing artworks for State of the Art: The Nation State as both Violator and Protector of Human Rights presented by Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality,  funded by The Arts Council and is working on a  solo show which will be displayed in the LHQ gallery in 2022.

Hina says that ‘as an artist,  I am inspired by Sadequain, Michelangelo, Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Shahzia Sikander and Anselm Kiefer.’

Amna Walayat has an M.A. in Modern and Contemporary Art, History, Theory and Criticism from University College Cork (2015) and M.A. in Fine Arts from University of the Punjab, Lahore in Pakistan (2002). She has worked as a Program Organizer with the Pakistan National Council of the Arts; Curator with Alhamra Arts Council and PhD studio-based researcher with PURAF, University of the Punjab. Her interest lies in British India, colonialism, orientalism, migration, and gender with the current focus on feminism.

Her recent shows include Maternal Gaze online, IMMA, 2021. Constellation, a two-person e-show, LHQ Gallery, Cork County Council. Imagine online Christ Church, Dublin, 2020. Transhumance, The Space, Dublin7, 2020.

She recently initiated the Ireland-Pakistan Arts Exchange (IPAE) to bring both art communities together through creating opportunities for networking and exchange. She has curated an e-exhibition, Re-Root with the Pakistani Artists Community in Ireland in collaboration with the Embassy of Pakistan, Dublin (August 2020) and organised Opportunities in Pakistan, a Visual Artists online Café in collaboration with VAI, December 2020.

Amna Walayat resided in the UK and France before settling in Cork, Ireland. She is a recipient of Arts Council Ireland Visual Artist Bursary Award, 2020 and Recipient of Glucksman Art Gallery Cork, Curatorial Mentoring Support under a Professional Development Award 2021 and the Dilkusha Award 2021.  Currently she is Member of Art Nomads, Smashing Times Dublin, Sample Studios Cork, Angelica Network, Visual Artists Ireland, Lavit Gallery Cork, Cork Print Makers under the Dilkusha Award.

Féilim James is an award-winning writer from Dublin, Ireland. In 2020, the Arts of Council of Ireland awarded Féilim a Literature Bursary Award to finish his debut novel, Flower of Ash, as well as a Professional Development Award. He received an Arts Bursary from Dublin City Arts Office in 2021 to finish his first poetry collection, I was a river, lost. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals, including The Fiction Pool, The Galway Review, and Icarus. His work through Irish, under Féilim Ó Brádaigh, has won seven Oireachtas na Gaeilge literary awards. His short fiction and poetry, through English and Irish, have appeared in a number of journals, including The Fiction Pool, The Galway Review, Icarus, and Comhar. A short film Féilim wrote, titled The Big No, produced by Smashing Times, was shortlisted by the IndieX Film Festival, and his play At Summer’s End has toured Ireland.

In The Big No, a young man tells the story of his psychological unravelling and subsequent mental health crisis. Told in the form of a voiceover monologue accompanied by compelling imagery, this poetic short film takes us on a journey of despair, introspection, and hope. As he battles against panic attacks and suicidal thoughts, he is forced to face the ‘why’ of his problems head on, learning some essential truths about himself and the world.

Féilim’s play At Summer’s End has been on tour with Smashing Times as part of The Woman is Present: Women’s Stories of WWII.  At Summer’s End is based on the life-story of Ettie Steinberg, an Irish woman who was murdered, along with her family, at Auschwitz.

Féilim’s themes are wide-ranging, and include identity, mental illness, guilt, human animalism, death, and humankind’s relationship with nature. He is committed to maintaining an ever evolving and progressive approach to his work, with each book both building on the last and differing in a vital way. In other words, the aforementioned themes will change as time passes, as will their stylistic rendering. ‘My inspirations are many and wide-ranging. To the fore are James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, John Banville, Marilynne Robinson, Ted Hughes, TS Eliot, Seán Ó Ríordáin, and Radiohead’.