Mary O'Donnell was born in Monaghan. She has published poetry, novels, short stories and a good number of critical essays and literary reviews. O’Donnell moves deftly and at ease between different forms of literary expression, allowing the subject matter to direct her towards its most adequate medium.
She is a previous visitor to the summer school in 1997 and has published five volumes of poetry so far. The first two collections – Reading the Sunflowers in September (1990) and Spiderwoman’s Third Avenue Rhapsody (1993) – were nominated for The Irish Times Literature Award; then came Unlegendary Heores (1998), September Elegies (2003) and The Place of Miracles: New and Selected Poems (2006).
A sixth volume, The Ark Builders, was published in 2009.
She is also the author of three novels: The Light-makers the Sunday Tribune’s Best New Irish Novel of 1992, Virgin and the Boy (1996) and The Elysium Testament (1999). In 1991 she published her first collection of short stories, Strong Pagans. Another, Storm over Belfast (2008), has been described as a “display of Mary O’Donnell’s immense talent”. Mary O’Donnell has been a member of Aosdana since 2001 and has presented several series of poetry programmes for RTE Radio. She has also been a teacher of creative writing and has participated in numerous poetry workshops as a facilitator.