Jaki McCarrick is an award-winning writer of plays, poetry and fiction.
She won the 2010 Papatango New Writing Prize for her play LEOPOLDVILLE, and her play BELFAST GIRLS, developed at the National Theatre London, was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the 2014 BBC Tony Doyle Award. BELFAST GIRLS premiered in Chicago in May 2015 to much critical acclaim (Windy City Times Critics’ Pick) and has since been staged widely internationally, with recent premieres in Australia and Sweden. In 2016, Jaki was selected for Screen Ireland’s Talent Development Initiative and has recently completed the screen adaptation of BELFAST GIRLS. Her play THE NATURALISTS premiered in 2018 in New York to rave reviews: “Impeccable, a gift to its actors” New York Times; “Beautifully performed” The New Yorker.
Jaki’s debut short story collection The Scattering was published by Seren Books and was shortlisted for the 2014 Edge Hill Prize. The collection includes her story The Visit, which won the 2010 Wasafiri Short Fiction Prize and was included in Best British Short Stories (published by Salt), 2012. On the basis of her debut collection, Jaki was longlisted in 2014 for the inaugural Irish Fiction Laureate.
Her plays BELFAST GIRLS, LEOPOLDVILLE and THE MUSHROOM PICKERS are published by Samuel French, while THE NATURALISTS was published in 2018 by Aurora Metro. Her play BOHEMIANS was read at RADA in 2017, starring Imogen Stubbs and Rob Jarvis, directed by Tilly Vosburgh. In 2016 Jaki was shortlisted for the St. John’s College, Cambridge’s Harper-Wood Studentship for her short play TUSSY about Eleanor Marx, a piece she is currently developing.
Jaki has held numerous residencies including Writer-in-Residence at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, Writer-in-Residence at Cill Rialaig Artists Centre, Kerry, and later in 2020 she will be Writer-in-Residence at the Irish College at Leuven University in Belgium. She also regularly writes arts pieces for the Times Literary Supplement (TLS), The Irish Examiner and other publications.
An interview with Jaki:
https://www.wasafiri.org/content/five-minute-interview-jaki-mccarrick/
