Zosia KuczyŃska
Dr Zosia Kuczyńska is a writer and researcher whose work explores queer archival praxis through creative-critical engagement.
She is the author of Brian Friel’s Models of Influence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) and two poetry pamphlets with The Emma Press, Pisanki (2017) and With others in your absence (2021).
Zosia is currently working as a Teaching Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of Edinburgh.
Academic
Poetry
‘Eight Poems’, in Queering the Green: Post-2000 Queer Irish Poetry (Belfast: The Lifeboat Press, 2021), pp. 162–174.
‘After the party’, in Local Wonders: Poems of our Immediate Surrounds, ed. by Pat Boran (Dublin: Dedalus Press, 2021), p. 93.
With others in your absence (Birmingham: The Emma Press, 2021).
‘Second Person Singular’, The White Review, Issue 27 (March 2020), pp. 79–84.
‘The Gift Shop Elegies #9’, in We’ve Done Nothing Wrong We’ve Nothing to Hide: The Verve Anthology of Diversity Poems, ed. and intr. by Andrew McMillan (Exeter: Verve Poetry Press, 2020), pp. 57–61.
‘“No time to wait til her mouth can”’, in Happy Browsing: An Anthology in Praise of Bookfinders (Belfast: The Lifeboat Press, 2018), p. 65.
‘Cliffhanger’, Poetry Ireland Review, Issue 129 (Winter 2019), p. 96.
‘On Woolacombe Beach’, The Tangerine, Issue 5 (Spring 2018), p. 28.
Pisanki, intr. by Bernard O’Donoghue (Birmingham: The Emma Press, 2017).
“Kuczynska narrates a bond between generations, one that has led her to depict the pear trees and “metal-sown” fields of her grandmother’s memories. Pisanki is a spellbinding tapestry of images and emotions, of displacement, loss and hope.”– PBS Bulletin
“There’s an honesty in these poems, conveyed through language that is raw, open-hearted, simple, and yet at the same time, weaves around each part of itself, to complicate matters.”– Manuela Moser, The Seamus Heaney Centre’s Friday Critique
'Don't Anticipate the Ending'
How might one artist’s ways of working generate new ways of making art for contemporary practitioners through archival engagement?
This collaborative, practice-based research project was based on the literary archives of playwright Brian Friel.
Between 2018 and 2021, I worked with dancer-choreographer Jessie Keenan, performance-maker Robbie Blake, and a company of performers, facilitating creative responses to the Brian Friel Papers.
Funded by the Irish Research Council and Arts Council Ireland.
Projects
Ongoing Collaborations
‘The Picture Palace‘ by Jessie Keenan
‘Perfect Imperfections‘ by Éadaoín Lynch (Typewronger Residency with Lavender Menace)
Academic
Professional Experience
University of Edinburgh
Oct 2024 – Present
Teaching Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Literature
University of Southampton
Oct 2022 – June 2023
Teaching Fellow in English Literature
University College Dublin
Oct 2018 – April 2021
Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellow
University College Dublin, Applied Languages Centre
Jul 2018 – Aug 2018
Presessional Tutor in English for Academic Purposes
University of Nottingham
Jan 2017 – Jul 2018
Teaching Affiliate (School of English)
Queen’s University Belfast
Feb 2016 – April 2016
Guest Lecturer (MA Irish Poetry)
Trinity College Dublin
Jan 2013 – April 2016
Teaching Associate (School of English)
Publications
Monograph
Kuczyńska, Zosia, Brian Friel’s Models of Influence (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
‘Brian Friel’s Models of Influence is undoubtedly an original and very valuable study that readers interested in creative processes, and not only in the drama of Brian Friel, will find useful and inspiring.’
—Martine Pelletier, Études Irlandaises
‘What Kuczyńska offers is not merely research based on close engagement with an archive, a methodology that would be sufficient for most scholarly tomes, but archival engagement as a method for creative practice. In doing so, Kuczyńska offers an original perspective on Friel’s creative process and a model for scholars and practitioners engaged in similar archival research.’
—Paul Murphy, Irish University Review
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Published
Kuczyńska, Zosia, ‘“[A] disoriented vision of…fact”: Brian Friel, Francis Bacon, and Faith Healer’, Irish University Review 50.2 (November 2020): 319–336.
Cullen, Sarah and Zosia Kuczyńska, ‘Review: Literary Archives in the Digital Age’, U.S. Studies Online, 6 October 2017 <http://www.baas.ac.uk/usso/literary-archives-digital-age/> [accessed 2 July 2018]
Kuczyńska, Zosia, ‘“Afterwards always came after before’: post-catastrophic space-time in the plays of Graves and MacNeice’, Gravesiana 4.1 (Summer 2014): 162–181.
Forthcoming
Kuczyńska, Zosia, ‘‘Censorship Public and Censorship Private: Authority, Authenticity, and Acceptability in the Early Production History of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come!’, Modern Drama, 68.1 (Spring 2025).
—, ‘Inventing Archival Justice: Shola von Reinhold’s LOTE and/as Queer Archival Praxis’, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies (Special Issue, ‘New Voices in Irish and Scottish Studies’) [forthcoming 2025]
In preparation for submission
Kuczyńska, Zosia and Katherine Wyers, ‘Queering data justice: using archival methodologies to recover transgender histories in healthcare data’, Journal of Information Science.
Book Chapters
Forthcoming
Kuczyńska, Zosia, ‘“Drag Lyric – Lyric Drag’, The Routledge Companion to Drag (forthcoming)
Editorial Assistant
Morash, Chris and Nicholas Grene, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre (Oxford: OUP, 2016).
Get in touch
Interested in my work? Got a collaboration in mind? Let me know!
@zosiasamosia.bsky.social