Philip O'Ceallaigh has published over 50 short stories and three collections, most recently Trouble (2021, Stinging Fly Press). John Banville has declared him as a “master” who has dared stay loyal to the shorts story form, Colm Toibin described him as “a brilliant, uncompromising and ambitious writer” and Rob Doyle named him his favourite living writer of short stories”. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages, has appeared in Granta, The Irish Times and The Los Angeles Review of Books and been broadcast on BBC radio.

Ruth Gilligan is an Irish novelist and academic now based in the UK where she works as a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. She has published five novels to date including, most recently, The Butchers, which won the 2021 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, awarded to the book that best captures the spirit of a place.

Photo credit: Paul Musso

Neil Hegarty grew up in Derry. His novels include The Jewel, described by the Irish Times as ‘a vital book for our time’, and Inch Levels, which was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Novel of the Year award in 2017.

Billy Roche's first novel, Tumbling Down, was published by Wolfhound Press in 1986, followed by The Wexford Trilogy for The Bush Theatre. The Wexford Trilogy (A Handful Of Stars- Poor Beast In The Rain- Belfry) was later filmed for the B.B.C. His other plays include Amphibians (R.S.C) The Cavalcaders (The Abbey / Royal Court), On Such As We and Lay Me Down Softly (Abbey Theatre).

Wendy Erskine's two prize-winning collections of short stories, Sweet Home and Dance Move are published by The Stinging Fly Press / Picador. Her writing has been listed for The Gordon Burn Prize, The Edge Hill Prize and The Republic of Consciousness Prize, among others. She also writes about art and culture. She edited a book of writing on art and the home, well I just kind of like it, for Paper Visual Art Books. In 2022 she was a Seamus Heaney Fellow at Queen's University. 

Sinéad Morrissey is the author of six poetry collections. Her awards include first prize in the UK National Poetry Competition, a Lannan Literary Fellowship and the E M Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Both Through the Square Window and Parallax received the Irish Times Poetry Prize. She was the winner of the TS Eliot Prize in 2013 and of the Forward Prize in 2017. In 2020 she was awarded the European Poet of Freedom Award for her collection, On Balance, translated into Polish by Magdalena Heydel.

Caitriona Lally has published two novels, Eggshells (2015) and Wunderland (2021). Eggshells was shortlisted for the Newcomer Award at the Irish Book Awards and the Kate O'Brien Debut Novel Award. In 2018, Lally won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction in 2019. She was the inaugural Rooney Writer Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub in 2022. She works as a cleaner in Trinity College Dublin.

Photo credit: Eoin Rafferty