Wexford County Council Arts Office are delighted to announce Local writers Sasha Wilson and Shane Murphy have been chosen for the Irish Writers Centre’s prestigious National Mentoring Programme 2025, following an exceptional response to this year’s nationwide callout, which attracted 354 applicants.
Each selected writer will receive one-to-one mentoring from an established writer, offering invaluable creative and professional guidance over the coming months.
County Wexford Arts Office funds the mentorships to guarantee that the chosen awardees receive this potentially career-changing support free of charge.
The 2025 programme is co-funded by a remarkable collective of county arts offices, libraries, arts centres, and other cultural bodies across Ireland, ensuring that local talent from diverse counties is identified and nurtured.
Congratulations to Sasha and Shane!
Sasha Wilson is a festival producer, a project manager, and an avid gardener. She has a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Sasha lives in rural Wexford and is chair of Write By The Sea, the county's annual literary festival. Her first novel, No Way Home, was highly commended in the Irish Writers Centre 2023. Early drafts of her current work in progress were shortlisted for the 2023 Exeter, Yeovil and Little Brown UEA Crime Prizes.
“Working one-to-one with an author I trust and admire is an unbelievable opportunity and one that I know is going to massively improve my work. I'm so grateful to the Wexford Arts Office and The Irish Writers Centre for including me in the 2025 National Mentoring Programme and can't wait to get started.”
Shane Murphy is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. His short stories have won the Cuirt New Writing Prize and appeared in Banshee and The Pig’s Back. His non-fiction project, Angel Holding a Shield, examines the role of Irish evangelism in shaping discussions around Ireland’s colonial positioning.
“Angel Holding a Shield is an idea I care deeply about, but it is fraught with challenges and calls me to write in a form I haven’t successfully written in before. This mentorship offers me a guide–a second gut–as I work to become the diligent and sensitive writer this idea requires, and a worthy emissary of its subject.”
