PR and media training doyenne Breda Brown has been appointed to chair the Irish Writers Centre (IWC) board of directors. Now in its 30th year, the centre supports, promotes and informs writers at all stages of their development, through membership, training, information, mentoring, networking opportunities, creative writing courses and events.
Brown co-founded Unique Media with Al Dunne to provide PR and media training services. Her IWC role is voluntary which she will exercise in conjunction with her full-time professional duties. Her work at Unique extends to clients such as the An Post Irish Book Awards, which is now seen as being one of the top annual events in the Irish literary calendar.
She also presents and produces the Inside Books podcast in which she interviews Irish and international authors and she reviews crime novels for the Sunday Independent. Before co-founding her agency business with Brown, she worked in radio as a news presenter with 98FM and Q102. She was also in PR with Murray and was assistant editor of Marketing.ie.
She holds an MA in journalism and BA in communication studies from DCU.
Susanne Dirks of the the Irish Translators’ and Interpreters’ Association is the IWC’s vice chairperson. Other new board members are Áine Denn, Keelin Kissane, Jess Majekodunmi and Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan. They join established members Lissa Oliver, Dermot Davis, Emma Gorman, Luán Ó Braonáin and former RTÉ producer Cathal Póirtéir.
The IWC’s full-time director is Valerie Bistany.
