PADDY O'REILLY
AUTHOR
Since her trip as Asialink sponsored Australian writer-in-residence in Tokyo, Paddy O'Reilly has been working on her novel set in Japan, but not at the expense of short stories. Paddy has a special fondness for the short story form and has won many prizes - including in 2001/2 first prize in The Age, The Greater Dandenong and the Judah Waten competitions - as well as publishing widely in magazines and anthologies.
"Writing in different genres opens up all kinds of creative possibilites," Paddy says. She has written scripts for two films, one short fiction film which won the Best International Student Film prize at the Melbourne Film Festival and was nominated for an AFI award, and a dramatized documentary about Daisy Bates, KABBARLI, which premiered at the Adelaide Arts Festival in 2002 and has since been shown around the world. "I learned through script to tell a whole story in pictures. The dialogue is important, but seeing, hearing and smelling in your own mind what you want to say is just as important." She is now working on another documentary script.
Apart from her writing Paddy has worked in teaching, curriculum development, festival coordination, translation and interpreting, multimedia development, as well as the usual motley assortment of jobs done by writers, including tomato packer, factory hand, Miss Florida Grapefruit Queen in Tokyo and complaints handler - the worst!
Paddy, an experienced lecturer and workshop leader, is available for creative writing talks and workshops with senior school students.
FEEDBACK
"It satisfied and challenged intellectually and touched the heart without resorting to mawkish sentiment. [It] made the reader consider their existence and the human condition and you can't do much more than that."
- Robert Drew, commenting on one of Paddy's stories which is set in the near future.
"Its limpid prose conjures...with a wonderful lightness and sureness of touch."
- Michelle de Krester, commenting on Paddy's winning entry for The Age Short Story Competition.