Maria Deasy, with Eugene O'Neill Award recipient Phil Donoghue, Rosie O'Donnell and former IAW&A board member Mark Butler in October 2017.
By Irish Echo Staff
Irish American Writers and Artists, Inc. (IAW&A) has announced its 2020 board, electing Maria Deasy as president and Brendan Costello Jr. as vice president. Sean O’Dowd will join the board as treasurer, while Karen Daly will resume her role as secretary.
Maria Deasy is a New York-based actress, who has appeared Off-Broadway and in several award-winning films and television shows. She won the Bairbre Dowling Spirit of the Festival Award at Origin Theatre's 2019 1st Irish Festival for her work as a Producer of Derek Murphy's “Inside Danny's Box,” and also received a Best Actress nomination for that production.
“It is a great honor to be given an opportunity to build on the wonderful successes of Malachy McCourt and the other founders of this organization, and of past presidents like Peter Quinn, Larry Kirwan and Mary Pat Kelly,” Deasy said.
Brendan Costello Jr. teaches creative writing at The City College of New York, where he earned his MFA. He won the Irwin and Alice Stark Award for short fiction. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Salon.com, The Huffington Post, OpenLettersMonthly.com, smokebox.net, and Epiphany Magazine.
Sean O’Dowd runs the Family Business Advisory group at Silvercrest Asset Management, a NYC-based RIA with $27 billion in AUM. He is also a NYC Ambassador for the Celtic FC Foundation and in 2019 was awarded the Belfast Ambassador Medal as part of the Belfast International Homecoming for work he has done within the Irish community on both sides of the Atlantic.
Karen Daly, a former book publishing executive, is an editor, researcher, writer and NY Public Library volunteer career coach.
For more information go to the website: www.iamwa.org or Twitter: @IrishAmWa or IAW&A’s Facebook page.
