Helena Mulkerns  

Helena Mulkerns has worked mainly as a writer, journalist, editor and photographer. She has written for Hot Press, The Irish Times, Rolling Stone, Music Express, Downtown Magazine, Elle, New York Perspectives, The Irish Voice, The Irish Echo, Irish America, Film Ireland, Cineaste, Irish Tatler, The Sunday Tribune etc. etc. She has also contributed to two non-fiction books, The Irish In America, (published in conjunction with the PBS television series of the same name) and Motherland, from William Morrow and Company .

She completed several seasons as live New York presenter on the popular prime-time Irish television series, Gerry Ryan Live, and has organized and performed at many readings and literary evenings in New York. She hosted a regular Saturday night cabaret review, The Clumsy Cabaret in the Café Sin-é with Elizabeth Logun and Deanna Kirk, featuring music and comedy, and organized special events there such as The Bloomsday Jaunt and has since performed several times at Isiah Shaeffer's Symphony Space event, Bloomsday on Broadway. She thanks her grandfather Jimmy (The Rajah of Frongoch), a strolling player, comedian and revolutionary, for her lack of reserve in the vicinity of a live mike.

Her first fiction was published in the Sunday Tribune newspaper and nominated for the Hennessy/ Sunday Tribune Literary Awards in 1991; she has published a total of seventeen short stories since then. She has been anthologised in collections such as Ireland in Exile (Ireland),Wee Girls (Australia), and Cabbage and Bones (U.S.).

In 1999, her story Surabaya Johnny appeared in a collection of Irish fiction entitled Shenanigans and she also featured in Penguin UK's alternative travel anthology Fortune Hotel, along with Will Self, Douglas Coupland, Emer Martin, Esther Freud and others. In 2000, she had a story in the Random House anthology Thicker Than Water, edited by Gordon Snell and featuring Emma Donoghue, Shane Connaughton, and others. Her short story Two Guns was published in NUIG's Review Of Post Graduate Studies in 2003, and she also features in Turbulence - Corrib Voices (see more below). Her short fiction has been nominated twice for America's Pushcart Prize. She is currently working on a new fiction project.

After a year and a half living in Central America, working for MINUGUA, the United Nations Human Rights Verification Mission in Guatemala, she moved continents to Africa in 2000,working for UNMEE, the UN Peacekeeping Mission for Ethiopia and Eritrea. In August 2004, she edited and published an anthology of emerging writers based in Galway entitled Turbulence - Corrib Voices.

In early 2006, for UNMEE Publications, and in collaboration with Uruguyan photographer Jorge Aramburu, she designed and wrote the 128-page coffee table style book, UNMEE In Pictures, a photographic impression of a contemporary United Nations peacekeeping mission in action.

In April 2007, she took up a posting as Press Officer with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan - UNAMA. Following her posting in Afghanistan, Helena returned home to Ireland. In April, the Natural Bridge literary review published A Child Called Peace and A Gentle Anarchy: The Asmara Book Club. Her short story Mare Rubrum was shortlisted for the Francis MacManus Literary Award, another short story was published in Census2 from 7Towers. Her first two poems were also published in The Sunday Tribune and Crannóg magazine.

In January 2009, she began hosting a new monthly, late night cabaret in the Wexford Arts Centre, called The Cáca Milis Cabaret. Presenting emerging talent as well as more established artists, the cab aret features music, dance, spoken word, comedy and short film in its line up. She participated in the Electric Picnic Arts and Music Festival in Ireland on 5th September 2009, on the Spoken Word Stage.

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