The Oscar Wilde Centre is an academic research and teaching unit in Trinity College, Dublin

Trinity College, Dublin

Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...

. It was founded in 1998, and is located at 21 Westland Row

Westland Row

Westland Row is a street on the south side of Dublin city, Ireland, dating from the year 1776. It was originally known as Westlands after William Westland who owned property in the area in the 18th century....

, the house in which Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

 was born and raised. This building, which is on the perimeter of Trinity, was purchased in the 20th century as part of an expansion programme. The Centre offers two post-graduate programmes: the M.Phil in Irish Writing, and another in Creative Writing

Creative writing

Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...

 - the first programme of its kind in Ireland. The centre was founded by the poets Brendan Kennelly

Brendan Kennelly

Brendan Kennelly is a popular Irish poet and novelist. He was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College Dublin until 2005. He is now retired and occasionally tours the USA as university lecturer.-Early life:...

 and Gerald Dawe

Gerald Dawe

Gerald Dawe is a Northern Irish writer and poet.-Early life:Gerald Dawe was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and grew up with his mother, sister and grandmother. He attended Orangefield Boys School across the city in East Belfast, a leading progressive liberal state school...

, who serves as the director. Richard Ford

Richard Ford

Richard Ford is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories.-Early...

, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer, joined the staff in 2008 as an Adjunct Professor.

Since 2007 the Centre also administers the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, an annual prize for an Irish writer under 40 .