Brian Leyden

Brian Leyden is from the coal mining valley of Arigna, County Roscommon,^[1] a place and a way of life memorialised in the author's work.

He secured a Masters in Creative Writing from Lancaster University in 2022^[2] and was awarded a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art by the NCEA in 1983.^[3]

Leyden has been a creative non-fiction mentor with the MFA in Creative Writing at Carlow University Pittsburgh for twenty years.^[4]

He has worked continuously in the arts, including the positions of Writer in Residence with Leitrim and Sligo Libraries. He has mentored for the NUI Galway BA in Creative Writing program.^[5] Reading tours he participated in include Ireland and its Diaspora Writers & Musician's Tour of Germany (1996), Newport Festival Rhode Island, and The Irish Writers' Centre Peregrine Readings (2010)^[6] and New York in 2019.

Leyden writes fiction and non-fiction; he is engaged with the relationship between place and the creative calling.^{[citation needed]}

He lives on the Atlantic coast of North Sligo with his wife.

• Love These Days (2024) novel^[7]
• Summer of ’63 (2016), novel.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}
• Sweet Old World: New and Selected Stories (2015), short stories.^[13][14]
• Death and Plenty (1996), novel.^[15][16]
• The Home Place (2002) memoir.^[16][17]
• Departures (1992), short stories.^[15][16]

• The Sligo Wave, (2024) a writer's response to a major exhibition in the Model Arts centre on the Sligo Landscape tradition from Jack B. Yeats to present day artists.^[18]
• The Sheemore Ambush, (2020) for the Decade of Commemorations (2012–2023) initiative (2022).^[19]
• The Sligo Bus and All That Jazz, (2020) The Hawk's Well Theatre: Come together with writer Brian Leyden and musician Eddie Lee.^[20]
• Walking Bird Mountain, (2018/2019) Creative Ireland, Sligo, and the Factory Theatre multi-media collaborative arts project.^[21]
• Creative Ireland Award script commission for the 'Famine Attic' , (2018) Carrick-On Shannon, Co Leitrim.^[22]
• Old Flames, (2016) A script commission as National Writer in Residence for the Bealtaine Festival, and live performance tour with multi-instrumentalist Seamie O Dowd.^[23][24]

• Remember Me, (2023) The Hawk's Well Theatre, Sligo.^[25]
• Ink and Lunacy, (1990), The Factory Theatre, Sligo.^[26]
• W.B Yeats: Experiments in Magic, (1989) St John's Church Theatre Listowel, Yeats Society, Co Sligo for the 50th anniversary of the poets death.^[27]

• Black Ice (2013) Premiered at the Jameson Film Festival, Dublin and the Model Sligo, before going to cinemas nationwide.^[28][29]

• Humpty Dumpty (2010) A libretto for a short opera by contemporary composer Ian Wilson. performed at the Lancaster International Concert Series March (2010).^[30]

• The Cathach Volume II (2010) Sligo Library Services online literary Journal.^[31]
• First Cut Anthology, (2004)^[32]
• Force 10 Literary Journal, Issues 7-8, (1995-1997)^[33]

• The Irish Station Mass (2015)^[34]
• The Closing of the Gaiety Cinema (2004)^[35]
• Even the Walls Were Sweatin' (1997)^[36]
• No Meadows in Manhattan (1991)^[37]

• BBC 4 Short Story, Departures (1990 and 2000)^[38]
• A Word in Edgeways (2022–2024)^[39]

• Brian's non-fiction and essays have been broadcast on national radio and widely anthologised. Including Sunday Miscellany: A selection 2018-2023, ed. Sarah Binchy,'^[40][41] A Door Opening: Sligo and the Legacies of Partition, eds. Susan McKay and Keith Hopper (2023).^[42] Further essays are included in Winter Papers 2, and 8, (2016 and 2022) eds. Kevin Barry and Olivia Smith,^[43][44] Maugherow: beneath the blowing sands, ed. Sean Golden, (2022),^[45] Fermata: Writings inspired by Music, eds. Eva Bourke and Vincent Woods, (2016),^[46] Irlande 66/69 - Guy Jungblut and Jacques Piraprez/Nutan, (2016).^[47] His personal essays on other writers appear in Writing the Sky: Observations and Essays on Dermot Healy, ed. Neil Murphy and Keith Hopper, (2016),^[48] This Landscape's Fierce Embrace: The Poetry of Francis Harvey, ed. Donna L. Potts (2013).^[49] His fiction has been anthologised in Reading the Future: New Writing from Ireland, ed. Alan Hayes (2018)^[50] Stories for Jamie, ed. John Scally (2002),^[51] The Brandon Book of Irish Short Stories, ed. Steve Mc Donagh (1998),^[52] Irish Christmas Stories II, ed. David Marcus (1997)^[53] and The Alphabet Garden: European Short Stories, ed. Peter Ayrton (1994).^[54]

• The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon "Literary Bursary" (2014) and (2022)^[8][55]
• Culture Ireland Travel Award, USA, (2017)^[8]
• Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Sound and Vision Award (2014)^[8]
• Sidney Brown Memorial Award (2012)^[56] for the musical adaptation Emerald. Music by Denise Wright. Book and lyrics by Chris Burgess. Based on the novel Death and Plenty by Brian Leyden.
• Sligo County Libraries Writer-in-Residence (2010)^[57]
• Norman Mailer Writers Colony (at Provincetown, MA) Scholarship (2009)^[58]
• Arts Council Travel & Training Award (2009)^[59]
• Jacobs Award for No Meadows in Manhattan (1991).^[60]
• Francis MacManus Short Story Award for The Last Mining Village (1988)^[61]