Donal Ryan, from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, is the author of six novels and a short story collection. He has won several awards for his fiction, including the European Union Prize for Literature, the Guardian First Book Award and four Irish Book Awards, and has been shortlisted for several more, including the Costa Book Award and the Dublin International Literary Award. He was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2013 for his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, and again in 2018, for his fourth novel, From A Low and Quiet Sea. In 2021 he became the first Irish writer to be awarded the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages. His seventh book, The Queen of Dirt Island, was published by Doubleday in August 2022 and was an instant number one bestseller. A law graduate and former civil servant, Donal has lectured in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick since 2014 and lives in Castletroy with his wife Anne Marie and their two children.
Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire in the southwest of England. After studying literature and drama at the University of Roehampton in London, she settled in Galway. She is the author of Pond and Checkout 19. Her fiction and essays have appeared in many publications, including Harpers, the New Yorker, The White Review, Granta, and Frieze. She is currently a Beckett Creative Fellow at the University of Reading.
Photo credit: Mark Walsh
Niall MacMonagle, teacher, critic and journalist hasedited several anthologies including the Leaving Certificate textbook Poetry Now, TEXT: A Transition Year English Reader, the Lifelines anthologies and Windharp: Poems of Ireland since 1916. He writes a weekly art column for the Sunday Independent and was awarded a Doctorate of Letters, honoris causa, by UCD, for services to Literature.
Emilie Pine is Professor of Modern Drama in the School of English, Drama and Film in University College Dublin. She has published widely as an academic and critic and is the author of the award-winning essay collection, Notes to Self, which has been translated into fifteen languages. Her most recent book is the novel, Ruth & Pen, which tells the stories of two women on a single day.
Photo credit: Ruth Connolly
Olivia Fitzsimons is from Northern Ireland now living in County Wicklow with her husband and two children. Her writing has been awarded Literature Bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland, and Northern Ireland, and a Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris/Literature Ireland Residency. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, The Cormorant, and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. The Quiet Whispers Never Stop, is her debut novel, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Butler Literary Award.
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