Oscar Wilde. The playwright Marina Carr. Claire Keegan, a former school teacher from Clonegal, Co Wexford. The Irish Times. What's the link? Simple.

Claire Keegan has been awarded this year's Irish Times Fellowship in Creative Writing at the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing, TCD.

The Oscar Wilde Centre is located at 21 Westland Row, which is the writer's birthplace. And Marina Carr? Well, she's just been appointed the Centre's writer fellow in residence and takes up her six months' post next January. Since last January, the Oscar Wilde Centre has been home to two MPhils: one in creative writing, the other in Anglo-Irish literature. Poets Professor Brendan Kennelly and Gerald Dawe are directors of the creative writing course.

Claire Keegan is typical of students enroling on the course. Already, she has considerable literary expertise and a collection of her short stories is due to be published by Faber in August. Just recently, she has embarked upon a novel. "Our students are people who are seriously committed to writing; some are practising, others are prospective authors. Some have already been published, but they want more focus in their writing or they want to rethink what they're doing," explains Gerald Dawe. Course workshops provide students with a crucial critical focus, he notes. Entry to the programme is via a primary degree and a short portfolio of work - published or unpublished. "You need to be used to the rigours of academic work," Dawe says.

Dawe is keen that the Oscar Wilde Centre becomes an important community asset. "We want to be be able to use the house as a bridge between the college and the local community," he says. There are plans to hold public events including lectures on Wilde's legacy. "His father was a scientist, his mother a poet and an activist. There's a lot of material which could be used as a bridge between the academic and civic community." The link between the arts and sciences has already been made. The house sits close to the departments of genetics and pharmacology. The Dental Hospital lies nearby. Prof Davis Coakley, TCD's dean of health sciences, is an expert on Wilde. His book, Oscar Wilde, the Importance of Being Irish, is published by Townhouse.

"It was Professor Davis who made the connection between the school of English and the house and paved the way for our moving in here," Dawe says.

For the future, Dawe hopes that the birthplace of one of Ireland's greatest writers will be restored to some of its former glory. Currently the house has a shabbyish, institutional feel - it has been denuded of its fireplaces, for example, and the windows facing on to Westland Row rattle when heavy vehicles zoom by.

The two grand rooms on the first floor have been earmarked for the Oscar Wilde Museum and the Vivien Mercer Library. The family of the Wildean scholar, Vivien Mercier, has donated his extensive library of Anglo-Irish literature and culture, collected over more than half a century, to the centre. At the top of the house, the former attic is due for conversion to provide comfortable accommodation for the writer fellow. By the year 2000, the centenary of Oscar's death, the Centre hopes to announce the appointment of an international writer fellow, who would take up residence during the months when there is no Irish fellow.