Rosemary Jenkinson was born in Belfast and is a playwright and short story writer. She has taught English in Athens, Nancy, Prague and Warsaw. Her plays include The Bonefire (winner of the 2006 Stewart Parker BBC Radio Award), Johnny Meister + The Stitch, Basra Boy, White Star of the North, Planet Belfast, Here Comes the Night, Michelle and Arlene, May the Road Rise Up and Lives in Translation. She was the 2017 artist-in-residence at the Lyric Theatre Belfast and 2010 writer-on-attachment at the National Theatre Studio in London. Her plays have been performed in Belfast, Dublin, London, Edinburgh, New York and Washington DC.

Her collections of short stories are Contemporary Problems Nos. 53 & 54 (Lagan Press 2004), Aphrodite’s Kiss (Whittrick Press 2016), Catholic Boy (Doire Press 2018), Lifestyle Choice 10mgs (Doire Press, 2020) and Marching Season (Arlen House, 2021). The Irish Times singled out Catholic Boy for ‘an elegant wit, terrific characterization and an absolute sense of her own particular Belfast’. Stories have also appeared in The Stinging Fly, The Fish Anthology and The Glass Shore. 

Writing for radio includes Castlereagh to Kandahar (BBC Radio 3) and TheBlackthorn Tree (BBC Radio 4). 

Essays on the nature of writing, Northern Irish identity and women’s writing have appeared in Female Lines, The Irish Times and on BBC World Service. She received the 2018/19 Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Photo credit: Jim Corr