about

Carolann Caviglia Madden is a poet, Navy brat, archivist, abolition lover, and Postdoctoral Researcher at Maynooth University on the IRC funded project, Women in Focus: Developing a Feminist Approach to Film Archive Metadata and Cataloguing. She holds a PhD in Poetry and Folklore/Ethnography, with a Certificate in Translation Studies and two Graduate Assistantships in Archives, from the University of Houston. She also holds an MA in Irish Studies from Boston College, an MFA in Poetry from San Diego State University, a Certificate in Archives from the AASLH, and has been educated at the University of Galway, UC Santa Cruz, and Queen’s University, Belfast. Her research revolves around folklore, poetry, material culture, expressive culture, archival absences and practices, and the intersections between them. She has published and presented research in particular on Irish folklore and poetry, women in and of folklore, archives and material culture, and maritime folklore. Her creative work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Stinging Fly, Bennington Review, World Literature Today, Interim, The Southwest Anthology: The Best from the Writing Programs (Texas Review Press), and elsewhere. A recent winner of the Inprint Verlaine Prize for Poetry judged by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, she is also the granddaughter of immigrants, and the recent recipient of a Research Fulbright to NUI Galway. You can find a growing exhibit of her archival research, entitled ThiarWest on www.thiarwest.com. She lives in Galway, Ireland.

 

Extended Bio:
Carolann Caviglia Madden is a Navy brat who was raised throwing salt over her left shoulder, saying a prayer to St. Anthony, and reading palms and tarot cards (though her father is a better palm reader). She grew up between the San Francisco Bay area and the Texas Panhandle, and has spent most of her life in California, Texas, and the West of Ireland, with a few years in Virginia, Brooklyn, and Boston in between. On her mother’s side, she is Italian and is the granddaughter of immigrants, and on her father’s side, she is Irish-American with roots in West Texas, Appalachian Kentucky, and Appalachian Pennsylvania. She writes and translates poetry, is a co-founding editor of Locked Horn Press, and a recent Online Exclusives Poetry Editor and Print Poetry Editor at Gulf Coast. She holds an MA in Irish Studies from Boston College (2009), an MFA in Poetry from San Diego State University (2015), and has also been educated at the University of Galway, U.C. Santa Cruz, and in Queen's University Belfast's Seamus Heaney Centre. She completed her PhD, with emphases in Poetry and Folklore/Ethnography and a Certificate in Translation Studies, at the University of Houston (2021). Her dissertation entitled “The Folklorist and the Poet: Explorations in Expressive Culture,” examines the intersections between creative writing and folk narrative, in particular early Irish marchën in the West of Ireland, and was awarded the Zamora Dissertation Award. While at UH, she also worked on the KUHT Collection as the Audiovisual Archives Assistant in UH's Special Collections, and as an Archives Assistant for UH and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has been trained as an archivist through the AASLH and has worked in archives since 2007. Most recently worked for a number of years as an Archives Assistant for the William J. Hill Texas Artisans and Artists Archive at Bayou Bend Collections and Gardens, where she also held a Research Fellowship from 2018-2020. She is the recent recipient of a Fulbright Research Award to Galway, Ireland, during which she conducted research on Lady Gregory, early folklore collecting in the West of Ireland, and Galway maritime lore, creating an interdisciplinary digital exhibit of her research: ThiarWest. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher on an IRC funded project entitled, Women in Focus: Developing a Feminist Approach to Film Archive Metadata and Cataloguing. With multiple generations of textile workers on both sides of her family, she is an active weaver, crocheter, and embroiderer. She wants all languages to live forever. She stands with immigrants. She's your new strega nona. And she wants to read your poems. All of them.