Education
Dunne edited several anthologies, beginning with The Poets of Munster (1985) and finishing with the Ireland Anthology which was completed posthumously by George O"Brien and his partner Trish Edelstein. Sean attended Scoil Lorcain primary school in Street Johns Park, just moments from where he lived, and later Mount Sion secondary school in Waterford city where he wrote for the school magazine and participated in organising poetry and music evenings.
Career
He released 3 collections of poems. Dunne"s collections of poems have all been well received, and in order of release are: Against the Storm (1985), The Sheltered Nest (1992) and Time and the Island. The account of his childhood In My Father"s House was released in 1991, and was a bestseller.
Dunne"s father was Richard Dunne.
His mother died in 1960 when Dunne was four. He attended University College Cork (UCC) where he was taught by Sean Lucy and John Montague and was part of a stream of talent issuing from the university in that period, which included Maurice Riordan, Gregory O"Donoghue, Theo Dorgan, Thomas McCarthy, William Wall, Gerry Murphy, Greg Delanty and others
He was active in student politics, as detailed in his memoir The Road to Silence. After college Dunne settled in Cork where he worked in the city library and continued to write and publish poems.
Around this time he began to make a living from freelance journalism.
Soon he joined the Cork Examiner daily newspaper where he became a columnist. Dunne died on 3 August 1995 of a heart problem. In 1996 Waterford City Council inaugurated the in his honour.
The 2009 Festival took place in Waterford City from Thursday 19 March to Saturday 21 March.
lieutenant featured Poets such as Tom Paulin, Conor O"Callaghan and MacDara Woods, with performance poets Eamon Carr and Raven. lieutenant also featured writers A. L. Kennedy, Paul Carson, Declan Lynch and more.