Waldron, Odrán
Odrán was born in Antrim and raised in Kilkenny, Ireland. He graduated with a BA in Journalism from Dublin City University before moving on to do the MA in Biography and Creative Non Fiction at UEA. At DCU, he was the arts editor of the university’s only student paper, The College View. Odrán is currently working on a memoir of his experiences coming of age in post-recession Ireland and with Ireland’s biggest sporting organisation, the Gaelic Athletic Association. As in many small parishes in Ireland, Odrán’s parish was centred on the GAA club, founded by his grandfather and coached primarily by his father. A series of fallings out led to his father walking away from the club and the memoir focuses on an outcast status felt in his hometown thereafter. The project will also encompass issues such as the cynical downturn in Ireland’s famous drinking culture, education, the Irish language and Odrán’s coming to terms with growing up in a northern family in southern Ireland. Odrán currently resides at home in Kilkenny, but plans to move to San Francisco in the autumn, where he hopes to put the finishing touches on the memoir and a fiction project. His main topic of interest, in both life and work, is the social impact of pop culture phenomena, be it sport, music, or anything else. He occasionally pops up on twitter as @odranwaldo.