The Ireland Funds Bursaries
The Ireland Funds Monaco Bursaries were established to enable literary and academic writers born or living on the island of Ireland to pursue a current project during a one-month residency at The Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco.
The Bursaries are aimed at writers in each category who have already published some work of note and are currently engaged in a work-in-progress which would benefit in some regard from holding the award.
The Literary Bursary takes place in the Spring (February/March) of each calendar year. The Academic Bursary takes place in the Autumn (October) of each calendar year. Applicants are advised to ensure they apply for the appropriate Bursary.
In addition to the cost of return airfare (within Europe only) and accommodation, the Bursary entails an honorarium of €1,300 to be presented to the holder on completion of the period of tenure. A daily subsistence will be made available in the form of weekly payments while the recipient remains in the Principality of Monaco.
Applying for The Ireland Funds Monaco Bursaries
The next available Bursary will take place in Spring 2026. It will be a Literary Bursary. Applications close on 1 October 2025.
Applications should be made by email to:
Ciara Austin
The Ireland Funds
Denshaw House
121-122 Baggot Street Lower, Dublin 2.
Applicants are asked to identify themselves by name, date and place of birth. Please provide a single PDF attachment including:
- An application letter, outlining the work to be undertaken while in residence in Monaco and why undertaking it at the Princess Grace Irish Library would benefit the work.
- A short author biography detailing publications to date, awards won and any other details of note.
Unsuccessful applicants are welcome to apply for a subsequent Bursary. A new letter from the applicant should be submitted if the Bursary is sought in any succeeding year.
The Ireland Funds Monaco Bursaries: Terms of the Tenure
- Bursary holders are required to remain in Monaco and to attend the Library frequently during the period of tenure. Full provision will be made as regards work-space, computer (including internet access) and other facilities of the Library.
- The recipients are also required to give a lecture, talk or reading to an invited audience at some juncture during the residency and may be asked to give a talk in English to the senior class at the “Lycée Albert I” (though this is not obligatory). Finally, Bursary holders will be asked to submit a piece of writing for inclusion in an occasional anthology.
- The Ireland Funds Monaco reserves the right to amend the terms of the Bursary prior to issuing any offer. The Trustees of the Library reserve the right to effect immediate termination of a Bursary in the event of conduct that compromises the good standing of the Library.
- Acknowledgement of support by the Bursary should be made in any publishing outcome connected with writing or research carried on during the period of tenure.
Previous Awardees
Academic Writer-in-Residence: Darragh Gannon, Autumn 2024
Dr. Darragh Gannon is Associate Director of Global Irish Studies at Georgetown University. He has published widely on Irish, British, and Global History. His books include Proclaiming a Republic: Ireland, 1916 and the National Collection (Irish Academic Press, 2016) and Ireland 1922: independence, partition, civil war, edited with Fearghal McGarry (Royal Irish Academy, 2021). His most recent monography – Conflict, Diaspora, and Empire: Irish nationalism in Britain, 1912-1922 (Cambridge University Press, 2023) – was awarded the American Conference for Irish Studies Donald Murphy Prize (Honorable Mention). A former Fulbright scholar, Dr. Gannon is a regular commentator on culture and current affairs for international media outlets, including TIME magazine, BBC, RTÉ, the Irish Times, Le Monde, and ABC Australia.
“To be invited to serve as The Ireland Funds Monaco Academic-in-Residence is, for any scholar, a once in a lifetime opportunity. I was honored to spend four glorious weeks in the company of Ireland’s revolutionary diplomat, Count Gerald O’Kelly, at the Princess Grace Irish Library. Thank you to my many dear friends at the PGIL, and the wonderful team at The Ireland Funds HQ in Dublin for making my premier visit to Monaco such a memorable experience. Je vais revenir!”
Writer in Residence: Flor MacCarthy, Spring 2024
Flor MacCarthy is a journalist and author whose non-fiction bestseller, The Presidents’ Letters (New Island Books) was shortlisted for Best Irish-Published Book 2021. She is a presenter of current affairs programmes on Ireland’s parliament television channel (Oireachtas TV), and is a former senior news journalist and anchor with Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ. Flor graduated from Trinity College Dublin with a degree in French and Art History, which led unexpectedly to her career in journalism. Flor contributes to a variety of radio and TV programmes and has conducted in-person public interviews with numerous figures from the worlds of politics and the arts, including: Nobel-prize winning poet Seamus Heaney, Lord David Puttnam, award-winning author Joseph O’Connor, The Irish Times award-winning journalist Lara Marlowe, Prof. Richard Kearney and more. From West Cork, she lives in Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin, with her husband and their two children.
“What a thrill it was to have been part of the 40th anniversary celebrations at the wonderful Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco as Writer-in-Residence for Spring 2024. The special anniversary events included an illustrated talk I was asked to give on enduring links between Monaco and Ireland, as seen through correspondence between Princess Grace, Prince Rainier III, and successive Irish presidents since the 1960s. Princess Caroline enjoyed some of the letters being brought to life by readings from the Monaco-Ireland Arts Society, including a card she’d written to President Éamon de Valera when she was just four years old, to thank him for his gift of an Irish pony! Thanks to The Ireland Funds Monaco, my four-week stay allowed me to get to know the library’s superb collections of books, art and music; see the brilliant work being undertaken there, and get to meet some of the many visitors to the region who are, as I was, enthralled to find this treasure trove of Irish culture on le rocher in Monaco.”
Academic Writer-in-Residence: Margarita Cappock, Autumn 2023
Dr. Margarita Cappock is an art historian, curator and writer. She was formerly Head of Collections at the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin which she joined in 1999 as Project Manager of the Francis Bacon Studio and Archive, where she coordinated the documentation and reconstruction of Bacon’s Reece Mews studio and its contents. She is the author of the book, Francis Bacon’s Studio (Merrell Publishers, London and New York, 2005) and has written several articles on Francis Bacon and other Irish, British and American Artists for The Burlington Magazine, Irish Arts Review and several other academic journals and exhibition catalogues, nationally and internationally. She has lectured worldwide on Francis Bacon’s studio and acted as Curatorial Advisor for exhibitions on Francis Bacon at the Hermitage, St. Petersburg; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Kunsthistorisches, Vienna; BOZAR, Brussels. She wrote a book on the Irish artist Sarah Cecilia Harrison which was published in 2022. She also was concept originator and co-presenter with Adam Clayton of U2 on the documentary, ‘Francis Bacon: The Outsider’ which aired on RTE1 on 15 December 2022 and is available on the RTE player. She is currently project lead on the establishment of the new Harry Clarke Museum of Irish Stained Glass for Dublin City Council.
“My residency at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco was a superb opportunity to continue my research on the artist Francis Bacon and his connections with Ireland and Monaco. It proved really fruitful to work in the environs of the library, with its extensive collection of books and also to have access to the archive at the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation in Monaco. I am very grateful to the team at the PGIL and to The Ireland Funds for making my stay so productive and enjoyable.” – Dr Margarita Cappock
Writer in Residence: Gráinne Hurley, 2023
Gráinne Hurley holds a PhD in Contemporary Irish Literature from University College Dublin and is a former English Literature lecturer and drama teacher. She is currently writing a book based on Mary Lavin’s relationship with The New Yorker, founded on the consultation and close examination of Lavin’s typescripts and manuscripts and her extensive correspondence with the magazine. Gráinne’s most recent essay, ‘To Cut a Long Story Short: The Shaping of Mary Lavin’s New Yorker Stories’, was published in Genesis and Revision in Modern British and Irish Writers (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020 & 2021) and her article, ‘Mary Lavin and The New Yorker: A Creative and Lucrative Partnership’, featured in The Irish Times on 12th July 2021. She has also presented papers at various international conferences and seminars. Gráinne’s research has garnered significant media and scholarly interest as it breaks new ground in the study of Mary Lavin and has been cited in various publications including Seamus Deane’s Small World (2021), The Oxford Book of Irish Fiction (2020) and Elke D’hoker’s Irish Women Writers and the Modern Short Story (2016).
Writer in Residence: Evelyn Conlon, 2020
Evelyn Conlon, novelist, short story writer, anthologist, is the author of four novels, among them Not the Same Sky, as well as four collections of short stories, most recently Moving about the Place, 2021, which includes the story Up at the Library, set in and around the Princess Grace Library. She has written about capital punishment, famine, secret lives, the double standard, borders, sex and lies. Evelyn has been Writer in Residence in many places, including UCD, as well as Visiting International Writer to among others, Mishkanot Sha’anamin, Jerusalem, Djerassi Foundation, California, The National Writers’ House, Australia, and the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. Her work has been widely anthologised and translated into many languages, most recently into Chinese and Tamil. She is currently Adjunct Professor with Carlow University, Pittsburgh, MFA Programme, is a member of Aosdána and lives in Dublin. Telling Truths: Evelyn Conlon And The Task of Writing, was published by Peter Lang, 2023.
Writer in Residence: Caoilinn Hughes, 2018
Caoilinn Hughes’ debut novel Orchid & the Wasp (Oneworld, 2018) was described by The New Yorker as ‘a winning debut novel’ and by the Times Literary Supplement as ‘a remarkable, propulsive novel.’ It was shortlisted for the 2018 Butler Literary Award. Her poetry collection Gathering Evidence won the Irish Times Shine/Strong Award and was shortlisted for four other prizes. She won The Moth International Short Story Prize 2018. Her BA and MA degrees are from Queen’s University of Belfast. Her PhD is from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. A fellow of the James Merrill House, the Bogliasco Foundation, Siena Art Institute, Faber and La Napoule Art Foundation, she has been awarded a Literature Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and The Ireland Funds Monaco Award. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Tin House, POETRY, The Stinging Fly, BBC Radio 3 and elsewhere.
Writer in Residence: Declan Kiberd, 2018
Declan Kiberd is a faculty member at English Department and Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies as the Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies and Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. A leading international authority on the literature of Ireland, both in English and Irish, Kiberd has authored scores of articles and many books, including Synge and the Irish Language, Men and Feminism in Irish Literature, Irish Classics, The Irish Writer and the World, Inventing Ireland, and, most recently, Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece (2009). He has recently co-edited with PJ Mathews Handbook of the Irish Revival 1891-1922, a five-hundred-page anthology of cultural and political writings with commentaries and introductions, published by Abbey Theatre Press in June 2015.
Writers in Residence: Liz Nugent, 2016
“I am incredibly grateful to The Ireland Funds for awarding me the Monaco Bursary as Writer in Residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library [home to over 12,500 books dealing with all aspects of Irish culture. It was a great honour and a privilege to be there, but also a great pleasure.”
– Liz Nugent, Writer-in-Residence, 2016
Writers in Residence: James Ryan, 2015
“It was an opportunity for which I’m very grateful to The Ireland Funds, the ever helpful library team, Géraldine Lance and Síle Jackson and, in particular, to our unofficial cultural ambassador in Monaco, Judith Gantley.”
– James Ryan, Writer-in-Residence, 2015
Writers in Residence: Dr. Mary Pierse, 2014
“What an honour and privilege it was, thanks to The Ireland Fund of Monaco, to be Academic-in-Residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library. That memorable residency month granted me valuable weeks of literary research and, as a glorious bonus, it also provided cultural exchange, history, glamour, some unforgettable weather and much fun.”
– Dr. Mary Pierse, Writer-in-Residence, 2014
Writers in Residence: Dr. Vandra Costello, 2013
“It is less than a month since I returned from my magical stay in Monaco but it feels like it was all some kind of wonderful dream—the Princess Grace Irish Library and The Ireland Funds Monaco miraculously gave me a bursary to live in Monaco for a month, with a flat, pocket money and, best of all, a gorgeous book-lined study complete with Jack B Yeats painting to work in—alone, and in peace.”
– Dr. Vandra Costello, Writer-in-Residence, 2013
Writers in Residence: Tom Phelan, 2012
“In my office at the Library, I was surrounded by first editions of books written by some of the giants of Irish literature. At times as I struggled with a sentence that just would not submit, I could feel the giants looking over my shoulder muttering, What an eegit! But on I plodded, and being free from the everyday distractions of home allowed me to make good progress on Working for John-Joe, the memoir I am writing.”
– Tom Phelan, Writer-in-Residence, 2012
Writers in Residence: Robert O’Byrne, 2011
“Two weddings and a funeral: not quite enough for a Richard Curtis film but plenty to engage one’s attention over the course of a month. And between these distractions, there was the necessity for work to be done in the Princess Grace Irish Library, hardly a challenging task in such agreeable surroundings except for one almost irresistible temptation.”
– Robert O’Byrne, Writer-in-Residence, 2011
Writers in Residence: Turtle Bunbury, 2011
“I am presently writing a history of the world as it was back in the year 1847. I actually addressed the friends of the PGIL on this peculiar subject in 2010. And that was the crux of what I was writing during my four wonderful weeks in Monaco in the sun-drenched autumn of 2011.”
– Turtle Bunbury, Writer-in-Residence 2011
Writers in Residence: James Harpur, 2010
“Monaco is a theatre of dreams and fantasies and nothing could be better for a writer. It is a unique place, grounded on medieval history but insistently modern, its tower blocks surging towards the sea like a standing ovation.”
– James Harpur, Writer-in-Residence 2010
