Gerard Donovan was born in Wexford, Ireland, and grew up in Galway. He graduated from NUI and the John Hopkins Writing Seminars. His debut novel Schopenhauer's Telescope (2003) was long-listed for the Man Booker prize, his third novel, Julius Winsome, currently available in over a dozen languages, is soon to be a major motion picture. His next publication was a collection of short stories set in Ireland, followed by a novel set in early twentieth-century Europe which he is currently writing.

Catherine Dunne is the author of ten published novels including The Things We Know Now, which won the 700th anniversary Giovanni Boccaccio International Prize for Fiction in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Eason Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. She has also published one work of non-fiction: a social history of Irish immigrants in London in the nineteen-fifties, called An Unconsidered People. Catherine’s novels have been short-listed for, among others, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award and the Italian Booksellers’

Evelyn Conlon is a novelist and short story writer who has been described as one of Ireland’s major truly creative writers. Observant and suffused with wit, her work has been widely anthologized and translated, including into Tamil; her selected short stories Telling is now available in Chinese. She is editor of four anthologies, including Cutting the Night in Two, and Later On, which became a centerpiece for a series of lectures titled The Language of War at the University of Bologna.

Alan McMonagle is a writer based in Galway, Ireland. In November 2015 he signed a two-book deal with Picador. His debut novel, Ithaca, was published in March 2017, and was nominated for the Desmond Elliott Award for first novels and an Irish Book Award. He has received awards for his work from the Professional Artists’ Retreat in Yaddo (New York), the Fundación Valparaiso (Spain), the Banff Centre for Creativity (Canada) and the Arts Council of Ireland.

Lia Mills writes novels, short fiction, memoir and essays.  Her first novel, Another Alice, was nominated for the Irish Times Irish Fiction Prize. Nothing Simple was shortlisted for Irish Novel of the Year at the inaugural Irish Book Awards. Her memoir of an experience of oral cancer, In Your Face, was named as a favourite book of the year (2007) by several commentators. Her most recent novel, Fallen, was the Dublin/Belfast Two Cities One Book festival selection for 2016.

Author and journalist Martina Devlin has written 10 books. Her latest is Truth & Dare, a short story collection in which she brings to life some of the women who shaped Ireland – from Maud Gonne to Countess Markievicz to Hanna Sheehy Skeffington. Her novels include About Sisterland set in the future in a world ruled by women, The House Where It Happened about Ireland’s last witchcraft trial (optioned for film) and Ship of Dreams about the Titanic disaster, with which she has a family connection.

Poet and novelist Mary O’Donnell was born in County Monaghan and studied German and philosophy at National University of Ireland, Maynooth. O’Donnell is recognized as a leading figure in the generation of Irish women writers who began publishing in the 1980s and 1990s; her work is often cited as key in expanding the horizons of Ireland’s traditionally male-dominated literary world.

Terry McDonagh taught creative writing at Hamburg University and was Drama Director at the International School Hamburg. He has published ten poetry collections as well as letters, drama, prose and poetry for young people. His work has been translated into German and Indonesian, and has been published worldwide in anthologies and literary journals. He has read at and facilitated workshops in Europe, Asia and Australia. He was Artistic Director of WestWords, the first Irish literature festival in Hamburg in May 2017.

Anne Haverty's first novel One Day As A Tiger (1997) has been described variously as 'a brilliant depiction of rural life' (Literary Review), a 'work of rare enchantment' (Sunday Telegraph), 'brimming with confidence and originality' (New Statesman) and 'A work of heroic imagination, huge and Dostoevsian'.  A tragi-comedy about an unlikely sheep farmer and his love for a genetically modified lamb and for his brother's wife, it won the Rooney Prize and was shortlisted for the Whitbread (Costa).