Queen's appoints three new fellows at the Seamus Heaney Centre for 2025
The Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast has announced the appointment of Dr Susannah Dickey as their new Publishing Fellow, and Dr Shannon Kuta Kelly and Dr Hanna Slättne as the new Ciaran Carson Writing and the City Fellows for 2025.
The Fellowships, worth £10,000 per annum, allow the University to maintain relationships with recently graduated alumni and supports writers at a critical point in their career by giving them professional experience in the literary and academic sector.
Fellows, working in all forms of creative writing, contribute to life at the Seamus Heaney Centre through masterclasses, workshops, one-to- one tutorials, and performances, and bring new voices to the academic and public arena.
Acting Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre, Professor Leontia Flynn, said of the three new fellows: "I'm delighted to announce Susannah Dickey as Publishing Fellow for 2025 and Shannon Kuta Kelly and Hanna Slättne as Ciaran Carson Writing and the City Fellows for 2025."The Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s hosts annual Fellowships in memory of its first director, Ciaran Carson, and inspired by his writing about the city of Belfast in prose as well as poetry. Both fellowships are awarded to recently completed PhD students at the School of Arts, English and Languages. Susie, Shannon and Hannah represent a brilliant line-up and we look forward to welcoming them to the Centre."
Dr Susannah Dickey is a writer from Derry. She is the author of two novels, Tennis Lessons (2020) and Common Decency (2022), and her debut collection of poetry, ISDAL, was published in 2023 and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.
Dr Shannon Kuta Kelly is a writer, translator, and musician. She recently completed her PhD in poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre, the critical component of which examined Ciaran Carson’s use of coded language and translation. Her work has appeared in such places as the New England Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and the Irish Times, and she has presented her research at conferences throughout the United States and Europe. Her debut poetry collection is forthcoming in spring 2026.
Dr Hanna Slättne is an award-winning dramaturg with a 25-year long career of exploring storytelling in performance with writers, directors and choreographers across new writing, dance and XR and hybrid environment. Her PhD, based at SARC focussed on writing for the body in immersive audio. Her own current practice builds on this work creating audio work that play with story, structure, and the environment.
She is an experienced lecturer having taught playwriting and dramaturgy at Goldsmiths University, Queen's and ATU Sligo. She is a facilitator of inter-disciplinary and international artists residencies including the SPACE Programs with Performance Corporation, LittleTinySpace with Anna Newell Theatre Adventures and The International Dramaturgy Lab 2021 connecting 90 dramaturgs across the globe.
In 2016 she received the Kenneth Tynan Award for Excellence in Dramaturgy and in 2017 an Elliot Hayes Award special commendation, for her work on the immersive audio play Reassembled Slightly Askew by Shannon Yee.
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