This year's Conference was brought to a close with the presentation of the A.W.B. Vincent/ AIF Literary Award to Irish playwright and author, Marina Carr.

Biography
1964- ; b. Dublin, raised Gortnamona, nr. Banagher, Co. Offaly; ed. Sacred Heart Convent, Tullamore, and UCD, BA, 1987 (English and Philosophy); lived for a year in New York, teaching and writing; commenced PhD on Beckett at TCD; plays incl. Low in the Dark (Project 1989), played by Crooked Sixpence Company; The Deers Surrender (Andrew’s Lane Th. 1990), for and by Gaiety School of Acting, June 1990; Ullaloo (Peacock 1991), following a rehearsed reading with Derek chapman, Olwen Foere, and Tom Hickey during 1989 Theatre Festival; This Love Thing (1991); The Mai (1994), winner of Dublin Theatre Festival Best New Play Award, 1994; appt. writer in residence at the Abbey Theatre in 1995; The Mai revived, Abbey, Summer 1995; transferred to Paris as part of l’Imaginaire Irlande; also Portia Coughlan (Peacock 30 March 1996), three-act play commissioned by the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, set in the Irish midlands, in which family secrets of incest drive the title-character to drown herself in the same river as her brother and alter-ego Gabriel; remarked for violence of language, it went on to make a hit at Royal Court, London (May 1996), with Derbhle [sic] Crotty in the lead role, winning her the Susan Smith Blackburn Award for women playwrights ($5,000); On Raftery’s Hill (Druid 1996); Ansbacher writer in residence at the Abbey theatre, 1996; By the The Bog of Cats (Abbey, 7 Oct. 1998), with Olwen Fouéré and Conor MacDermottroe; Aosdána member, 1995; TCD writer in residence, 1999; Portia Coughlan, premier in Toronto, Dec. 2001; new a play, Ariel (2002).

© Princess Grace Library

Thursday, February 20 2003
Glucksman House
212-998-3950

7 p.m. Playwright Marina Carr reads from her recent work.
Carr has earned a formidable critical reputation with plays such as The Mai, Portia Coughlan, and By the Bog of Cats. She is a member of Aosdána, the affiliation of distinguished artists honored for their contribution to the arts in Ireland. Carr is from Offaly and the Irish midlands feature prominently in the landscape and language of her work.