Kaleidoscope 
Rosemary Jenkinson was born in Belfast and is an award-winning playwright and short story writer. She studied Medieval Literature at Durham University and taught English in Athens, Nancy, Prague and Warsaw before returning to Belfast in 2002. Plays include The Bonefire (winner of the 2006 Stewart Parker BBC Radio Award), Johnny Meister + The Stitch, Basra Boy, White Star of the North, Planet Belfast, Here Comes the Night, Michelle and Arlene, May the Road Rise Up and Lives in Translation. She was the 2017 artist-in-residence at the Lyric Theatre Belfast and 2010 writer-on attachment at the National Theatre Studio in London. Her plays have been performed in Belfast, Dublin, London, Edinburgh, New York and Washington DC.
Rosemary’s collections of short stories are Contemporary Problems Nos. 53 & 54 (Lagan Press 2004), Aphrodite’s Kiss (Whittrick Press 2016) and Catholic Boy (Doire Press 2018). Catholic Boy was singled out by The Irish Times for ‘an elegant wit, terrific characterisation and an absolute sense of her own particular Belfast’. Stories have also appeared in The Stinging Fly, The Fish Anthology and The Glass Shore.
Writing for radio includes Castlereagh to Kandahar (BBC Radio 3), The Blackthorn Tree and Two People Shorten the Road (BBC Radio 4).
Essays on the nature of writing, Northern Irish identity and women’s writing have appeared in Female Lines, The Irish Times and on BBC World Service.
Her latest play is Michelle and Arlene: Ulster Says Snow.
Photo credit: Jim Corr
Kaleidoscope