Rosemary Jenkinson

Rosemary Jenkinson was born in Belfast in 1967 and is an award-winning playwright and short story writer. She left in 1986 for Durham University and taught English in Greece, France, the Czech Republic, and Poland before returning to Belfast in 2002. Her plays include The Bonefire, which won the Stewart Parker BBC Radio Award; Planet Belfast; Here Comes the Night; Michelle and Arlene; May the Road Rise Up; and Lives in Translation. She was 2017 Artist-in-Residence at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. Rosemary’s short story collections include Contemporary Problems Nos. 53 & 54 (Lagan Press, 2004), Aphrodite’s Kiss (Whittrick Press, 2016) Catholic Boy (Doire Press, 2018) which was shortlisted for the EU Prize for Literature, and Lifestyle Choice 10mgs (Doire Press 2020). She was singled out by The Irish Times for ‘an elegant wit, terrific characterisation and an absolute sense of her own particular Belfast’. In 2018 she received a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland to write a memoir.

Rosemary Jenkinson’s archive at the Linen Hall Library contains material from throughout her career as a playwright, essayist, and short story specialist. Contents of the collection include letters, ID cards, documents relating to trips to the United States of America, scripts, education certificates, contracts of employment, grant application letters, programmes, photographs, posters and articles. Some notable items include annotated scripts, personal correspondences between Rosemary Jenkinson and friends, posters for plays, rough drafts of speeches, letters from the BBC, personal photographs, and details of work with the Linen Hall Library.