Moya Roddy left school at 17 and attended the National College of Art and Trinity Arts Lab as a night student. She continued painting during a two-year stay in Italy, before moving to London where she trained as a television director at the Soho Poly. Que Sera Sera, which she wrote and directed, won a Sony Award in 1983 and the British Film Institute commissioned a full-length feature, I Prefer Freesias in 1985. Several of her screenplays were optioned in America. She worked in television adapting a novel for Scottish TV and in Current Affairs/Documentaries for Channel 4 on programmes such as Promised the Earth , analysing the UN Decade for Women and was sole writer on the innovative four-part art series Opening Up the Family Album.
Returning to live in Ireland, her debut novel The Long Way Home, ( Attic Press 1992), was described as ‘Simply Brilliant' in the Irish Times. They had published her first short story, Biddy's Research, in 1991 and since then she's had numerous stories published including The Day I Gave Neil Jordan A Lift ( Anthology of Irish Comic Writing, Penguin/Michael Joseph,) which was broadcast by RTE and CBS Canada. Her work has been anthologised in Dublines and the Anthology of Irish Women's Writing , (Bloodaxe). She wrote several episodes for RTE's sit-com Upwardly Mobile . A radio play Dance Ballerina Dance was short-listed for the PJ O'Connor Award and broadcast by RTE. She collaborated with Pete Mullineaux on Butterfly Wings, broadcast on RTE radio in 2010, and two stage plays, Trust Games , (Galway Youth Theatre 2002) and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry – specially commissioned for the 2003 Cuirt International Festival of Literature. She completed an MA in Writing at NUIG in 2008.
Moya combines her writing with facilitating meditation at Brigit's Gardens, Roscahill, GMIT and the National University of Ireland. She also teaches a workshop Writing With Heart uniting writing skills with meditation techniques.
Although Moya Roddy is an established writer this is her
long-awaited debut collection - and it's been worth the wait.
These fourteen
stories show a deep understanding and empathy towards the human condition – towards
those ‘other people' who, in the long run, turn
out to be just like ourselves.
Her stories take us into the minds and hearts
of people feeling betrayed, desperate or trapped as well as the more fortunate
ones like Lecky, heroine in The Chemist's Assistant , who are on
the verge of discovering who they are and what they're capable of. Whether
it's the artist who can't paint, the tired mother trying to be ‘cool', the
joy-rider whose sister is a point of light or the distraught seminarian traipsing
through snowy Dublin mountains in The End of the Game , Moya's tenderness towards her
characters shines through, while her own relationship to art, nature and
the spiritual dimension in life enriches these stories and makes them authentic.
Praise for Moya's work –
"This is an admirable collection of stories,
entertaining and
thought-provoking, with a wide variety of theme and
character and excellent writing. Containing fourteen pieces,
the collection makes for an accessible and often haunting
read." BOOKS IRELAND
The Long Way Home
“… as the novel (began
to fall seamlessly together around the character of Jo Nowd, the realisation
dawned that it is simply brilliant.”
Victoria
White Irish Times
The Day I gave Neil Jordan a Lift
“… a
genuinely comic story … This is beautifully judged and paced and
as sad as it is funny.”
Hugh
Leonard Sunday Independent
Title Other People
Author Moya Roddy
Subject classification Fiction -short stories
Format/extent 140x216 mm, 114 pp
Publication date December 2010
Price €11-99 pb
ISBN 978-1-907017-05-6