In 1983, Monica Corish travelled overland from Nairobi to Cairo. She returned to Africa six months later to work as an English teacher in North Sudan. Soon afterwards she trained as a nurse, and later studied for an MA in Development Studies. Over the course of the following twenty years she travelled to South Sudan, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Angola and Sierra Leone, working as a health adviser with IRC, WHO, Trocaire and GOAL. Five Love Songs to a Continent, a memoir inspired by her work and travel in Africa, was broadcast on Lyric FM’s The Quiet Quarter.
Her Africa-inspired poems have been published in The Stinging Fly and The SHOp; and in her debut collection, Slow Mysteries, published by Doghouse Books with the support of bursaries from The Arts Council and Leitrim Arts Office. Monica is a trained AWA writing group leader. She offers quarterly creative writing workshops for Returned Development Workers and Volunteers in the Irish Aid Information Centre in Dublin. Details of these workshops can be found on her website.
Web Site: www.monicacorish.ie
Details of this year’s festival programme can be found elsewhere on this website.
