Dr Andrew Meehan
Lecturer
Creative Writing
Prize And Awards
- Arts Council of Ireland literature bursary
- Recipient
- 6/2018
- Desmond Elliot Prize longlisting
- Recipient
- 2018
Publications
- Estate in Montagna
- Meehan Andrew
- Internazionale (2024) (2024)
- There is a field, i'll meet you there
- Meehan Andrew
- Winter Papers (2024) (2024)
- Love story
- Meehan Andrew
- (2023)
- A land of energy and soul
- Meehan Andrew
- (2022)
- Becoming a New Person : Instant Fires by Andrew Meehan
- Meehan Andrew
- (2022)
- How to write a love story
- Meehan Andrew
- (2022)
Research Interests
I am a novelist with an interest in the shapes and stories to be found in romantic and familial love. My next novel Best Friends, a Dublin-set story of love in later life, will be published in the summer of 2025. The research for this novel will inform my work leading the ESRC-funded impact project Getting On: Understanding & Writing Love In Later Love, which is running throughout 2025.
My debut novel One Star Awake was longlisted for the 2018 Desmond Elliott Prize, the UK's most prestigious award for debut novelists. It was described by Sue Leonard in the Irish Examiner as ‘mesmerising, inventive, heart-wrenching, and brilliantly realised.’ My second book, The Mystery of Love, a unique and moving reimagining of the relationship between Constance and Oscar Wilde, was published in 2020, when it was a Waterstones Irish Book of the Month. My most recent novel Instant Fires, was described by the Irish novelist, Lisa McInerney, as ‘another gorgeous exemplar of Andrew Meehan’s exquisite, extraordinary prose, and his instinct for love and soul and life in all of its hues and heartaches.' My short fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Banshee, Winter Papers, and in TOWN & COUNTRY: The Faber Book of New Irish Stories.
I am also a screenwriter (film adaptations of One Star Awake and The Mystery of Love are in funded development) and an experienced script executive, most notably at the Irish Film Board (now Screen Ireland) where, as Head of Development, I nurtured the development of numerous Irish feature-films, including the Oscar-nominated animated feature Song of the Sea; the groundbreaking comedy Good Vibrations, and the recent critical and commercial success Black 47. I was also involved as an executive on a number of Oscar nominated and shortlisted short films. These interests also combine in my classes at undergraduate and postgraduate level on screenwriting and fiction (and the adaptation from one to the other).
I am currently the subject leader for English & Creative Writing.
Professional Activities
- Andrea Gibb
- Host
- 6/2/2025
- Take Four Books (Radio 4)
- Recipient
- 29/12/2024
- Strath Book Club
- Invited speaker
- 7/11/2024
- Burning Books Ireland
- Recipient
- 22/12/2022
- BBC Radio Scotland Afternoon Show
- Recipient
- 20/12/2022
- an online reading for the West Cork Literary Festival
- Recipient
- 17/12/2022
Projects
- Getting On: understanding & writing love in later life (ESRC IAA-funded)
- Meehan, Andrew (Principal Investigator) Hafford-Letchfield, Trish (Co-investigator)
- Getting On: Understanding & Writing Love in Later Life is a new project that explores and embraces the lived experience and cultural representations of love in later life in Scotland today. The project is being run from the University of Strathclyde by staff in Creative Writing and Social Work/Social Policy in collaboration with Autumn Voices, the organisation for growing old creatively.
- 13-Jan-2025 - 13-Jan-2026
- ESRC IAA 2023 / R220785-145
- Meehan, Andrew (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2023 - 31-Jan-2028