Michael Hughes was born and raised near the border in Northern Ireland. After a degree in English at Oxford, he studied theatre at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris, and has worked as an actor for many years, under the professional name Michael Colgan. He currently teaches Creative Writing at Queen Mary, University of London. His first novel The Countenance Divine was published in 2016, followed in 2018 by Country, which won the London Hellenic Prize, and was shortlisted for the EU Prize for Literature and the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. It was also chosen as a Book of the Year in the Guardian, TLS and New Statesman. 

Photo Credit: Sarah Laverton