Writing from the Margins Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi and Páraic Kerrigan in conversation with Aoife Martin

Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi and Páraic Kerrigan join writer Aoife Martin in conversation about their own writing, and the challenges and obstacles faced by writers from minority groups when writing and publishing with mainstream press. Enyi-Amadi, a commissioned poet on the Poetry as Commemoration project, has also been published in The Art of the Glimpse, a short story anthology uniting classic works with neglected writers and marginalised voices. She also co-edited the Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets anthology. Kerrigan’s Reeling in the Queers (New Island) explores the lesser-known stories of the fight for LGBTQ rights since 1974. Illuminating fourteen distinct moments that map the changing social and cultural landscape of Ireland, the stories consider the gains, losses and devastations, and ultimately celebrate a strong community and its allies, speaking across the generations. 

© Mícheál O’Heachtairnaigh

Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi is a writer, editor, arts facilitator, and cultural consultant based in Wicklow, Ireland. She is a commissioned poet on the Poetry as Commemoration project, an initiative of the Irish Poetry Reading Archive at UCD Library. She was selected for the Screen Ireland 2021 X-Pollinator Program. Her work is published in The Art of the Glimpse anthology, and she co-edited the Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets anthology. Chiamaka is on the editorial board of Unapologetic Magazine and the advisory board of CIACLA and serves as a Creative Writing Mentor at Fighting Words. She has been invited to share her work internationally, most recently at the 2024 Canadian-Irish Artists Symposium in Toronto and the 2024 Irish Arts & Writers Festival in San Francisco.

© Vincent Hoban

Páraic Kerrigan is an author, researcher and Assistant Professor at university College Dublin, where he teaches on LGBTQ Irish culture. His first book, LGBTQ Visibility, Media and Sexuality in Ireland was published by Routledge in 2021 and explored media representations of Ireland’s LGBTQ community. He is currently leading a project called ‘Waking the Hirschfeld’, an oral history podcast about the LGBTQ community space, the Hirschfeld Centre, which operated out of Temple Bar from 1979-1987.

Aoife Martin is an IT professional and writer. She is passionate about books and co-runs an online book club. Her articles have appeared in theJournal.ie, the Irish Times, Image Magazine, Irish Tatler, and several other publications. She currently sits on the board of TENI (Transgender Equality Network Ireland) and enjoys writing, going to the cinema and swimming in her spare time.