About Kathleen Dixon Donnelly

Kathleen Dixon Donnelly has been involved in teaching and the creative process for over 30 years.

Dr. Donnelly’s Ph.D. dissertation, ‘Such Friends,’ in Communications from Dublin City University, was on the relationships among writers in early 20^th century salons—The Irish Literary Renaissance, the Bloomsbury Group, the American expatriates in Paris, and the Algonquin Round Table. Her thesis for her Master’s in Business Administration (MBA), Manager as Muse, from Duquesne University, in her hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, was on the topic of managing creative people, a case study of Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’s work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe.

She has given presentations on the writers, including film showings, for lifelong learning programs in the United States as well as the United Kingdom. Dr. Donnelly has also led informal ‘Such Friends’ walking tours of the Left Bank of Paris, and organized the ‘Such Friends’ tour of Ireland for the 100^th anniversaries of James Joyce’s Bloomsday and the Abbey Theatre. She has organized and led a tour of the Bloomsbury sites in Kent and Sussex for private American clients.

Since moving to the UK, Dr. Donnelly has given presentations about the writers at the Southbank Centre in London, as well as venues in Birmingham such as the Birmingham & Midland Institute, the Birmingham Book Festival, the Birmingham Irish Heritage Group and the Electric Cinema.

Dr. Donnelly has applied her studies of creative people to teaching and training in public relations and advertising for universities and corporations, and on Semester at Sea where she adapted her creativity and marketing communications courses to include assignments in European and Asian ports.

Since retiring as a Senior Lecturer in Public Relations at Birmingham City University [BCU], she has taught for Boston University’s Study Abroad program in London and the University of Worcester in Jinan, China. Dr. Donnelly  has completed a Master’s in Education as well as the National Academy of Writing [NAW] diploma program at BCU. Her pieces ‘Packing My Students Away’ and ‘On Seeing Picasso’s Portrait of Gertrude Stein for the Second Time, June 9, 2002’ have been included in the first and third anthologies of the NAW program.

Dr. Donnelly began blogging in 2002 and has self-published blooks of her blogs as part of her Gypsy Teacher series chronicling her travels with her Irish husband Tony Dixon. These are available at www.lulu.com/spotlight/gypsyteacher, and you can follow her @gypsyteacher1 or @suchfriends.

Dr. Donnelly lives with Tony Dixon, and their cats William Butler Yeats (Willie) and Lady Augusta Gregory (Gussie), in Birmingham, UK.

And Kathleen is just thrilled that you read this far. E-mail me and tell me what you think:  kaydee@gypsyteacher.com