Rosemary Jenkinson

Washing Windows III anthology is representative of contemporary Irish literature, and of a new society and a new way of accepting and honouring the talent all around us.

Contemporary Irish Plays showcases the new drama that has emerged since 2008. Featuring a blend of established and emerging writers, the anthology shows how Irish writers are embracing new methods of theatre-making to explore exciting new themes – while also finding new ways to come to terms with the legacies of the Troubles and the Celtic Tiger. Freefall is a sharp, humorous and exhilarating look at the fragility of a human life, blending impressionistic beauty, poignancy and comedy. Forgotten features the interconnecting stories of four elderly people living in retirement homes and care facilities around Ireland, who range in age from 80 to 100 years old. Drum Belly is a fascinating play about the Irish mafia in late 1960s' New York. It premiered at the Abbey Theatre in 2012. Previously unpublished, Planet Belfast by Rosemary Jenkinson is about a woman named Alice – Stormont’s only Green MLA who must toe a delicate line between large, sectarian power bases in order to promote an environmental agenda in Northern Ireland. Desolate Heaven is a story about two young girls hoping to find freedom from home in the trappings of love. It was first performed at Theatre 503, London, in 2013Written for the 2012 Dublin Theatre Festival, and previously unpublished, The Boys of Foley Street by Louise Lowe is a piece of site-specific theatre which led audience members on a tour of the backstreets of inner-city Dublin. Edited by the leading scholar on Irish theatre, Patrick Lonergan, Contemporary Irish Plays is a timely reminder of the long-held tradition and strength of Irish theatre which blossoms even in its new-found circumstances.

Following on from her Edge Hill Award shortlisting for Love in the Time of Chaos, Jenkinson returns with Laganside Lights, a bold new collection of short stories brimming with peacemakers and warmongers, lovemakers and lawyers, artists and influencers – all human life is here colliding with kinetic verve. Jenkinson employs her legendary wit to peel back the layers of contemporary Belfast, illuminating the feverish desires, loneliness and pyrrhic triumphs of everyday existence.

Silent Trade is a highly relevant contemporary play set in Belfast about Precious, a young Nigerian woman, who is trafficked into domestic servitude in a suburban house, before being sexually trafficked to a brothel. Eventually, she escapes to freedom and encounters the justice system. This play was inspired by engagement with organizations who deal with human trafficking, and with members of the Nigerian community who have knowledge and experience of exploitation.

Sandy Row Riots is a collection of poems that are by turns wry, moving and epiphanic. Rosemary Jenkinson lives up to her reputation as one of the sharpest and most relevant writers working today by alighting on contemporary love and relationships, family ties and the teeming city streets. Her themes deal with life in Northern Ireland, both past and present, paramilitary and suburban.

Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2023, this compelling collection illustrates how the short story is an apt genre to represent complex issues and perceptions a quarter-century after the Good Friday Agreement. While Greater Belfast is represented by protagonists ranging from Catholic members of the police to customs officials hampered in their jobs by mobs, non-Irish make an appearance too as they face war in Ukraine. As transgenerational trauma, drugs, and Brexit hit protagonists of different walks of life, Jenkinson’s style mixes empathy with striking similes and dry humor.

Written by acclaimed playwright and fiction writer Rosemary Jenkinson, Billy Boy is a fiery new play about Belfast bonfire builders. Aaron is looking after the biggest and most controversial "boney" in the East side of Belfast and is determined to fight the council’s ruling. The problem is, if he gets into any more trouble, he might have to pack his bags.

The writers in Washing Windows Too have things on their minds that have exploded into that love-urgency that makes writers write. And, just as it should be, few subjects are off limits. A poet may not always love her inspirational material, but those here revere the act of writing so much - value it so much - that honing their ideas, visions, and insights into poem-shaped, concrete objects has become crucial. It is an honour to witness what has urged these writers to the process of thought, cogitation, sentence, and finally, poem. Many writers use writing as an attempt to solve life's conundrums - to solve themselves. And to understand the self and others better, too, because writing is the best way they know to gain sight into, and survive, the vagaries of life. Perhaps the writers in this anthology are like me - maybe for them, too, writing is their sanity and their joy, their best thinking and settling tool. A poem can be a path into the deepest, purest self, and back out again - through the very act of writing - to a calmer, less frenetic place. Because poets deal with issues that concern them - universal truths, often - certain themes emerge, as they do in all anthologies. In Washing Windows Too, particular groupings of motifs re-occur and these include birth and motherhood; child-love and empty nests; migration and refugees; women's power and agency; bodies, the male gaze, and violence; nature and its beauties; art, creation, and the act of writing itself; uneasy relationships; politics; health and illness; and grief and death. And, because we are living in the early twenty-twenties, the pandemic naturally features in some poems

Marching Season is the fifth short story collection by Belfast author writer and playwright, Rosemary Jenkinson, who is renowned for being one of the sharpest and boldest chroniclers of contemporary life. This latest collection boasts a dazzling cast of misfits, artists, musicians, teachers, and would-be millionaires; some striving brightly for success and defying the drift of the modern world, others seeking out new and lost loves. These lyrical, witty, and glittering stories are all bound together by the luminescence of Jenkinson's peerless prose.