The Winter 2005 Journal highlights this year's 21 Fellowship recipients, as well as the following feature article, and much more! Become an Artist Trust member and the Journal will be mailed to you four times a year.

Feature Article:

Paul Goode Ireland Residency by Fionn Meade

left image: Carrowholly Cove
right image: Amy Wheeler with Oscar Wilde

Paul Goode’s generosity has once again bestowed the gift of time and home away from home in Westport, Ireland to a lucky Artist Trust Fellowship applicant. Working with Artist Trust staff, Paul Goode chose this year’s recipient of the Paul Goode Ireland Residency, filmmaker Lynn Shelton, from a process that dovetailed into the selection of the 2005 fellowship recipients. Following a selection process where each of this year’s selection panels (Craft, Literature, Media and Music) identified two finalists from those semi-finalists that had not been awarded a Fellowship, Goode and a friend came into the Artist Trust office to review work samples. As a result, Lynn Shelton will receive $5,000 and a month’s stay at Paul Goode’s residence in Westport, Ireland.

Upon hearing the good news, Shelton has already planned her trip for June and July later this summer and plans to spend her time in Ireland working on her next screenplay and possibly even shooting a project while there. “Maybe I’ll spend the next few months writing and preproducing so that I’ll be ready while I’m there,” offered Shelton. “That’s the notion that feels most exciting to me at the moment.”

Shelton is currently finishing up post-production on her first feature film as a writer/director, We Go Way Back. Produced in partnership with The Film Company, Shelton is waiting to hear back from various film festivals where the film has been submitted (Sundance, Slamdance, Berlin and Rotterdam Film Festival to name a few).

And just to give a further glimpse into the amazing impact this generous donor-advised residency can have, I asked playwright Amy Wheeler, last year’s recipient, to wax poetic about her time in the west of Ireland after a year’s time to consider her experience. What follows is her delightful response:

“An American Playwright in Ireland”

Ireland is the enchanted land of writers. Before I arrived in June – the delighted recipient of Paul Goode’s generous residency – the implications of being a playwright in the home of Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett hadn’t fully sunk in.

Paul’s home (I call it “the Goode House”) is a brilliant writer’s haven – full of windows looking out on Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s holy mountain, lovely Clew Bay and Clare Island, home of the 15th century “Pirate Queen,” Grace O’Malley.

The Goode House sits on a hill above a cove. And as I would write and daydream and gaze out the windows, nature would unfold her story: clouds obscure the cap of Croagh Patrick then suddenly clear to reveal a tiny white chapel at the very top. Below, the water ebbs and flows from the Bay of the cove, floating the tiny fishing boats, then setting them to rest on the mud. My thoughts are guided by nature’s story, as they cloud and clear, float and settle, ebb and flow.

Stories show up – several a day – a motley crowd impatiently waiting their turn to catch my attention. Grace O’Malley shoves her way to the front of the line, demanding I put her in a play or screenplay. She’s so forceful that she sends my Mom and I off on a blustery day in search of the chapel where she’s buried. We take a ferry, rent bikes and ride out on the edge of Clare Island, where we encounter the “holder of the chapel key” – a nearly toothless fellow with windswept gray locks who looks for all-the-world like Ichibod Crane – and who regales us with stories of the infamous “she-queen of Clew Bay.”

Stories abound. Pubs are a storyteller’s haven, and I spend many an evening sipping Guinness (it is better there) and eavesdropping on tall tales being spun all around me (research, you know).

And at the end of the day, there are so many more stories to tell than there’s space on the page. So get yerself a Guinness, pull up a stool and I’ll bend yer ear for a spell.

Amy Wheeler, 2004 Paul Goode Ireland Residency Recipient