Eleanor Hooker is an Irish poet and writer. Her third poetry collection Of Ochre and Ash (Dedalus Press) is the recipient of the 2022 Michael Hartnett Award. Her other two collections with the Dedalus Press are A Tug of Blue and her debut The Shadow Owner's Companion, which was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award for the Best First Irish Collection 2012. Her chapbook Legion (Bonnefant Press, Netherlands) was published in 2021.
Son of musicians, Steafán Hanvey hails from Downpatrick in Northern Ireland. Performance was also part of school-life, where his teachers would have him sing ballads of immigration, lost love, and blooming heather to his classmates. Throughout this time, his ears were also filled with the music of Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Makem & Clancy, Tommy Sands, Simon & Garfunkel, Nina Simone, Willie Nelson, and Bob Dylan.
Mac Lochlainn was born in Belfast in 1966. He writes in both Irish and English and his bi-lingual collections have received national and international awards. He has been writer in residence at Queens University, Belfast and the University of Ulster. He has been a fellow at the University of Massuchussetts, Boston. Mac Lochlainn also works as a broadcaster and presenter and has presented award winning documentaries on minority languages, poetry and music for BBC and TG4.
Claire McGowan was born in Northern Ireland and moved to England to study at Oxford University. After living in France and China, she settled in London. She’s the author of the Paula Maguire crimes series, and several other novels under the name Eva Woods. She has also written plays, scripts, and short stories, and had a radio drama broadcast on Radio 4 in early 2019. She was awarded the Nickelodeon International Writing Fellowship in 2018, and as part of that spend time living in Los Angeles.
Eimear McBride was born in 1976 in Liverpool to Northern Irish parents. Aged two she and her family returned to Ireland and her childhood was mostly spent in Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo. At fourteen they moved again to Castlebar, Co Mayo. In 1994, at seventeen, she went to London and spent the next three years studying acting at Drama Centre. Much of her twenties were spent temping and travelling. At twenty-seven she wrote A Girl is a Half-formed Thing.
Bernard MacLaverty was born in Belfast but now lives in Glasgow. He has published six collections of short stories and five novels inluding Booker prize shortlisted Grace Notes (1997). He has written versions of his fiction for other media - radio plays, television plays, screenplays and libretti. He wrote and directed a short film ‘Bye-Child’ which won a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best First Director and a BAFTA nomination for Best Short Film. He is a member of Aosdána.
Aifric Campbell is an Irish writer based in the UK. Aifric grew up in Dublin and moved to Sweden where she read Linguistics and lectured in Semantics at the University of Gothenburg. After 14 years in investment banking she decided to focus on the fiction she’d been writing since childhood. She received her PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in 2007 where she has also lectured.
Cónal Creedon is a novelist, playwright and documentary filmmaker.
Appointed Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at University College Cork (2016).
His published books include: Pancho and Lefty Ride Out (1995), Passion Play [‘Book of The Year’ BBC4 Saturday Review](1999), Second City Trilogy (2007), The Immortal Deed Of Michael O’Leary (2015), Cornerstone, an anthology of student writing. (ed.) UCC/Cork City Libraries (2017).
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