Name Rita Higgins | Role Poet | |
 | ||
Books Throw in the Vowels, Witch in the bushes, Hurting God: Part Essay Pa, Face licker come home, An awful racket | ||
Rita ann higgins on the saturday night show 4 1 2014
Rita Ann Higgins (born 1955) is an Irish poet and playwright.
Contents
- Rita ann higgins on the saturday night show 4 1 2014
- 2014 rita ann higgins plaque unveiling
- Early life
- Career
- Personal life
- References
2014 rita ann higgins plaque unveiling
Early life
A native of Ballybrit, Galway, Higgins was one of thirteen children in a working-class household. She married in 1973 but following the birth of her second child in 1977, contracted tuberculosis, forcing her to spend an extended period in a sanatorium.
While confined, she began reading, and took to composing poems. She joined the Galway Writers' Workshop in 1982. Jessie Lendennie, editor of Salmon Publishing, encouraged Higgins and oversaw the publication of her first five collections.
Career
Higgins was Galway County's Writer-in-Residence in 1987, Writer in Residence at the National University of Ireland, Galway, in 1994–95, Writer in Residence for Offaly County Council in 1998–99. She was Green Honors Professor at Texas Christian University, in October 2000. Other awards include a Peadar O'Donnell Award in 1989, several Arts Council bursaries 'Sunny Side Plucked' was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She was made an honorary fellow at Hong Kong Baptist University November 2006.
Personal life
Higgins is a member of Aosdána, though the group turned her down five times previously. She cites the feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the Irish Republican, Mary MacSwiney, as role models. She lives in Galway and An Spidéal