Author Red Washburn will be in conversation with Roseleen Walsh and Kelly Gallagher about gender, art, and resistance in Irish women’s prisons.
Irish Women’s Prison Writing: Mother Ireland’s Rebels, 1960s-2010s explores 50 years of Irish women’s prison writing, connecting the work of women leaders and writers in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The book documents and analyzes the ongoing Irish freedom struggle from an abolitionist feminist perspective, using personal correspondence, auto/biographical narratives, and poetry of the following key women: Bernadette McAliskey, Eileen Hickey, Mairéad Farrell, Síle Darragh, Ella O’Dwyer, Martina Anderson, Dolours Price, Marian McGlinchey (formerly Marian Price), Áine and Eibhlín Nic Giolla Easpaig (Ann and Eileen Gillespie), Roseleen Walsh, and Margaretta D’Arcy.
Red Washburn (they/he) is Professor of English and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Queens College. They are Affiliate Faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies at the Graduate Center. Red’s articles appear in Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Journal of Lesbian Studies. Their essays are in several anthologies, including Theory and Praxis: Women’s and Gender Studies at Community Colleges, Introduction to Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches, and Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community. They are the co-editor of Sinister Wisdom’s Dump Trump: Legacies of Resistance, 45 Years: A Tribute to Lesbian Herstory Archives, and Trans/Feminisms. Finishing Line Press published their poetry collections Crestview Tree Woman and Birch Philosopher X. They are co-editing WSQ’s issue "Nonbinary" (forthcoming Fall 2023). They received an ACLS/ Mellon fellowship for their next project "Nonbinary: Tr@ns-Forming Gender and Genre in Nonbin@ry Literature, Performance, and Visual Art."
Roseleen Walsh was born in 1950. Her literary journey began in Armagh Prison, where she was interned for 13 months and 2 weeks, 1973-4. She began writing poetry on her cell walls and ceiling. At home now more than 50 years later, two of her living room walls also are covered in her poetry. She is the author of a poetry collection, Poems and Monologues and short stories, Face to Face. She has written approximately 40 plays, 37 of which were produced in Belfast, Derry, Armagh and Dublin by Commedagh Productions and Irish Youth Theatre. Political Drama, which features 23 political plays, is available in universities and libraries across the United States. She is currently writing a book, My Internment, about her prison experience.
Kelly Gallagher is a filmmaker, animator, and Associate Professor of Film at Syracuse University. Her films and animations have screened at venues including: the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and the Smithsonian Institution. Recent commissioned animations have screened on Netflix and PBS. She’s presented solo programs of her work at institutions including: SFMOMA, Close-Up Cinema London, SF Cinematheque, and Wexner Center for the Arts. She is the 2022 recipient of the Helen Hill Award from NYU's Orphan Film Symposium. Kelly enthusiastically organizes and facilitates fun and inclusive film workshops and camps for communities of all ages, from Kentucky to California, from New York to Iowa and beyond.