St Mary’s Research Fellow Awarded Grant

Dr Keith Hopper, Research Fellow in the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham and colleague Prof Neil Murphy (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), has been awarded a research grant from the Ministry of Education, Singapore, for Dermot Healy: A Multi-volume Research Project (2015-2016). Until his untimely death in June 2014, Dermot Healy was frequently regarded as ‘Ireland’s greatest living writer’. Outside Ireland, Healy is probably better known as a novelist, but he was also a prolific playwright, poet, screenwriter, actor, editor, and all-round literary enabler. [caption id="attachment_10815" align="alignnone" width="223"] Dermot Healy[/caption] Dr Hopper and Prof Murphy are currently editing a volume of Healy’s collected short stories, as well as an edited reprint of his first novel, Fighting with Shadows, for Dalkey Archive Press, both scheduled for publication in 2015. An edited volume of Healy’s collected plays, and a collection of essays about Healy’s work will be published in 2016. Dr Hopper said, “Dermot Healy was an extraordinary but often under-appreciated writer. Our hope is that these four volumes, which constitute the first phase in an on-going research project, will help cement his reputation within the Irish literary canon and beyond.”   Dr Keith Hopper teaches Literature and Film Studies for Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education, and is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. He is the author of Flann O’Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-modernist (revised edition 2009) and general editor of the twelve-volume Ireland into Film series (2001–2007). He is also the co-editor (with Neil Murphy) of Flann O’Brien: Centenary Essays (Dalkey Archive Press, 2011) and The Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013).