Novelist Tom Phelan Awarded Writer's Residency

Tom Phelan near the Heinrich Boll Cottage in Dugort, Achill Island, County Mayo. (Photo credit: Patricia Mansfield Phelan)

Novelist Tom Phelan was awarded a writer's residency at the Heinrich Boll Cottage in Dugort, Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland, which he com-pleted earlier this summer.

Heinrich Boll, the German novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972, lived in Achill Island during the 1960s and 1970s. His memoir Irish Journal recalls his experiences in Achill. For the last fifteen years, the Boll cottage has been used as a retreat for writers and artists from around the world.

Tom Phelan, a retired employee of the Garden City Public Schools, is the author most recently of the critically acclaimed novel The Canal Bridge. The novel tells the story of Irish soldiers serving in the British army and fighting in the trenches during the Great War at the same time a band of Irishmen in Dublin were rebelling against the British and claiming the support of their "gallant allies in Europe"--the Germans.

Following his residency in the Boll Cottage, Phelan traveled to Bantry, County Cork, where he gave a seminar in historical fiction writing at the West Cork Literary Festival.