Fatena Abu Mostafa is a Palestinian poet, storyteller, and translator from Gaza, currently based in Galway, Ireland. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature with a minor in Translation from the Islamic University of Gaza and is currently completing an MA in Creative Practice at Atlantic Technological University. Fatena’s writing is deeply rooted in memory, home, displacement, and the everyday human experiences that persist through war and loss. Moving between Arabic and English, she writes poetry and stories that carry fragments of the places, people, voices, and ordinary moments that have shaped her life. Her work seeks to bring individual experience into conversation with wider histories of displacement, while preserving the intimacy and humanity that can so easily disappear behind headlines and statistics. For Fatena, writing is both a form of expression and a way of keeping what has been lost present. She sees  poetry in particular, as a space where pain can be reshaped and memory can continue to live. She seeks to preserve stories from disappearance and to create connections between her own experiences and those who encounter her work.

Evelyn Conlon is an Irish novelist, short story writer and anthologist.  An unsentimental thinker, her work is suffused with originality and wit. Born in Co. Monaghan, she is now resident in Dublin and has a deep interest in Australia.  Not the Same Sky, translated this year into Irish as Ní hIonann Spéir, engages with the story of the over 4000 Famine Orphan girls brought to Australia on 21 ships.  A member of Aosdána, her work has been widely anthologised and translated into many languages. A conscientious researcher, she gave a series of talks in Australian Universities titled ‘Corridors of Truth, what Fiction adds to History’. Skin of Dreams, shortlisted for Irish Novel of the year, delves into the issue of capital punishment, and brought her on to Death Row in the United States. Her earlier novels Stars in the Daytime and A Glassful of Letters deal variously with social and political dilemmas, as well as the lives, loves and hates of her characters. She has published four collections of short stories, My Head is Opening, Taking Scarlet as a Real Colour - the eponymous story was performed at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival - Telling – New and Selected Short Stories, the title story of which shows us how the moral is affected by whose voice gets to do the telling. Her most recent work includes the collection, Moving about the Place, and the biographical essays Reading Rites. 

Carrie Crowley is probably best known for An Cailín Ciúin, an Irish language film that made it to the Oscars in 2023. A more recent Irish feature, Aontas, won Best Feature in a number of different territories and was awarded Film Of The Year at last year’s Oireachtas in Belfast. Carrie was presented with the Dublin Film Critics’ Circle Maverick award at DIFF ‘25 for the same film. This year she has worked on the John Crowley film Walk The Blue Fields and on Mary Rose – the new production from Colm Bairéad and Cleona Ní Chrualaoi who were the team behind An Cailín Ciúin. Last year she played Mammy Walsh in The Walsh Sisters, a Stefanie Preissner series based on the books of Marian Keyes for RTE and BBC and she is currently filming season 2 of same. Carrie has also worked as a presenter on both television and radio.  A six part series about renovating dilapidated community buildings – Buildings Beo – aired recently on TG4 and she also travelled around Ireland last year filming Sáile, a documentary about the sea and what it means to us. The pairing of her beloved Irish language and the Arts led to Carrie being given an honorary doctorate by SETU on November 3rd 2024.

Nasia Dionysiou was born in Nicosia, Cyprus, in 1979. She is the author of three works of fiction that reimagine overlooked histories, exploring memory, identity, and the enduring echoes of the past. Her latest novella, Don't Write Arthur (Polis, 2025), reimagines Arthur Rimbaud's brief passage through Cyprus during the early years of British colonial rule on the island. It received the 2026 Klepsydra Prize for Prose (Greece) and is forthcoming in French translation. Her previous novella, What a Camp Is (Polis, 2021), revisits the internment of Jewish Holocaust survivors in British camps in Cyprus after the Second World War. It received the Greek State Award for Short Story and Novella and has been translated into French, Ukrainian, and Serbian. Her first collection, Superfluous Beauty (To Rodakio, 2017), received the State Award for Short Story and Novella of the Republic of Cyprus and has also appeared in Serbian translation. Her work has been presented at numerous international literary festivals, including Marseille and Paris (2025), the Copenhagen Jewish Culture Festival (2024), Gothenburg (2024), Athens–Epidaurus (2023), Chania (2022), and Budapest (2021). Dionysiou lives in Cyprus, where she continues to write fiction exploring the intersections of personal memory, history, and belonging.

Leon Diop is a writer, speaker and broadcaster from Tallaght, Dublin. Born to an Irish mother and Senegalese father, he is best known as the co-founder and CEO of Black & Irish, the organisation established in 2020 to celebrate and support Black and mixed-race Irish identities while promoting equality, inclusion and anti-racism in Ireland. A graduate of Maynooth University, where he studied psychology and served as Students' Union President, Diop has become one of Ireland's leading voices on identity, belonging and social change. He is the co-host of RTE’s Black & Irish Podcast and is a regular contributor to public discussions on diversity, culture and contemporary Irish life. In 2023, he co-authored Black & Irish: Legends, Trailblazers & Everyday Heroes with Briana Fitzsimons, a children's book celebrating influential Black Irish figures. The book received the An Post Irish Book Award and has been widely praised for its contribution to representation in Irish publishing. His memoir, Mixed Up: An Irish Boy's Journey to Belonging, explores themes of heritage, identity, resilience and community through the lens of his own experience growing up Black and Irish in Dublin. Leon Diop is currently Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) at the Arts Council of Ireland and serves on the boards of the Childhood Development Initiative, and Tallaght and South Dublin County Partnership.

Dr. Keith Hopper teaches Literature and Film Studies for Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education. He is the author of Flann O’Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-modernist (revised edition, 2009); general editor of the twelve-volume Ireland into Film series (2001-2007); and co-editor of Flann O’Brien: Centenary Essays (2011) and The Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien (2013). Recent work includes co-editing (with Neil Murphy) a series of four books relating to the late Dermot Healy: The Collected Short Stories and an edited reprint of Healy’s debut novel Fighting with Shadows appeared in 2015; The Collected Plays and a volume of critical essays entitled Writing the Sky: Observations and Essays on Dermot Healy were published this summer (by Dalkey Archive Press). 

Roscommon-born Cathy Jordan is one of Ireland’s most celebrated traditional singers and has been the lead vocalist of internationally renowned folk group Dervish for more than 30 years. A self-taught musician, she plays guitar, bouzouki, bodhrán and bones, and has performed thousands of concerts across nearly 40 countries. Her career highlights include performances at the Great Wall of China and Brazil’s Rock in Rio festival before an audience of over 250,000 people. As a songwriter, Cathy has collaborated with acclaimed lyricist Brendan Graham, best known for writing You Raise Me Up. Since 2014, she has also been a popular presenter of Fleadh TV on TG4. A passionate advocate for Irish culture, she has spent decades collecting and preserving traditional songs, helping to safeguard an important part of Ireland’s musical heritage. Alongside Dervish, Cathy has represented Ireland as a cultural ambassador on official visits to countries including China, Latvia and Lithuania. Dervish’s recent releases include The Great Irish Songbook volumes 1 and 2, featuring collaborations with artists such as Glen Hansard, Moya Brennan, Steve Earle and Imelda May. Cathy’s many honours include the BBC Lifetime Achievement Award, the Freedom of the City of Sligo, and in 2025 she received TG4’s prestigious Gradam Ceoil Singer of the Year award.

Nithy Kasa was born in Kimpese, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was raised in its capital, Kinshasa and in Galway, West of Ireland. Her work is featured on the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation website, the University of Galway’s Archive, the Special Collections of University College Dublin, Poetry Ireland Review and others. She is among the ten poets selected for Poetry as Commemoration for the Decade of Centenaries 2012-2023 programme by UCD supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. She’s the recipient of I bhFad i gCéin international residencies for Cave Canem by Poetry Ireland, The Arts Council and the Department of Foreign Affairs. She received the Poetry Ireland Commission 2020 and was shortlisted for The Eavan Boland Emerging Poet Award 2021. She is one of two inaugural poets for Writers Across the Diaspora program by Torch Literary Arts with Texas State University. Her debut collection of poetry, Palm Wine Tapper and The Boy at Jericho, (Doire Press 2022), was selected by the Art Council of Ireland for the ‘read mór’ for Culture Night Ireland 2022, was listed among the top poetry books of 2022 by The Irish Times, was shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize 2023, and has been taught in university courses in Ireland, the UK and the United States. How to Make Love to a Colonised Body, (Doire Press 2026), is her second collection of poetry. Kasa shares her life between Ireland and the DR Congo. 

Orlaith McBride career spans the arts, heritage and public service sectors. Since 2020, she has served as Director of the National Archives of Ireland, where she oversees the preservation, management and public accessibility of the State's documentary heritage. McBride was Director of the Arts Council of Ireland from 2011 to 2020. During her tenure, she led the development of the Council's landmark strategy Making Great Art Work 2016-2025, oversaw major national cultural initiatives, including Ireland's EU Presidency cultural programme in 2013 and the Arts Council's 2016 commemorations programme, and strengthened partnerships across the arts and public sectors. Prior to this she worked extensively in theatre, youth arts and local government, building a reputation as a passionate advocate for artists, creativity and public engagement with culture. As Director of the National Archives, she has guided the organisation through a period of significant public interest in Ireland's history, developing exhibitions, digitisation projects and initiatives that connect people with the records of the nation's past. 

Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951. He now lives in New York. A former radio and television producer for the BBC in Belfast, he taught at Princeton University for thirty-five years. He is the author of fifteen collections of poetry including Joy in Service on Rue Tagore, a New York Times Notable Book of 2024. Among his awards are the 1972 Eric Gregory Award, the 1980 Sir Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, the 1994 T.S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2006 European Prize for Poetry, the 2015 Pigott Poetry Prize, the 2017 Queens Gold Medal for Poetry, and the 2020 Michael Marks Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2024 Paul was elected a ‘Saoi of Aosdana’, an Irish fellowship of artists – the highest honour that an artist in Ireland can ever have bestowed upon them.

Jessamine O’Connor lives in a train station on the Sligo Roscommon border and mainly writes fiction and poetry. Her debut novel Somewhere was published by Lilliput Press in May this year and explores themes of friendship, solidarity and hope within the orbit of addiction and the housing crisis. Her poetry collection Silver Spoon is published by Salmon Poetry, and she has several chapbooks including with Nine Pens Press and the Black Light Engine Room press. An editor with Drunk Muse Press, she was on the editorial team for the inaugural cross-campus journal Scrimshaw. She is a recipient of awards from the Ireland Chair of Poetry, Drumshanbo Written Word Festival, Galway Hospital Trust’s Poems for Patience, Comórtas Filíochta Chultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, the iYeats, the Francis Ledwidge and the Dermot Healy awards, and the Arts Council. A graduate of ATU Sligo, she teaches English as another language, gives writing workshops, and loves making films, music, and new things with other artists. 

David Park was born in Belfast and is the author of ten novels, a novella and two collections of short stories. The Truth Commissioner (Bloomsbury 2008) was awarded the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize and adapted for film; The Light of Amsterdam (Bloomsbury 2012) was shortlisted for the IMPAC Prize and The Poets’ Wives (Bloomsbury 2014) was Belfast’s One City One Book.  He has won the Authors’ Club First Novel Award, received a Major Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, The Bass Ireland Award for Literature and the American Ireland Award for Literature.  He has been shortlisted four times for the Irish Novel of the Year. His novel Travelling in a Strange Land (Bloomsbury 2018) won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award. His most recent novel is Ghost Wedding.

Frank Shovlin is from the West of Ireland and is a graduate of University College Galway and the University of Oxford. He is Professor of Irish Literature in English at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool and is author of several books on Irish literature, including The Irish Literary Periodical 1923-1958 (Oxford, 2003) and Touchstones: John McGahern's Classical Style (Liverpool, 2016). His edition of The Letters of John McGahern was published by Faber to critical acclaim in 2021. John McGahern: A Writing Life, a major new biography of the author, will be launched at The Dock on 9th October 2026.

Fintan Vallely is a musician, writer and researcher from County Armagh. He has taught flute in Ireland and internationally, in 1986 publishing the first tutor for Irish flute. His recordings include a solo LP in 1979, albums with Berklee guitarist Mark Simos (1990), satirical song with Tim Lyons (2005), music from each Irish county with Gerry O’Connor and Tiarnan Ó Duinnchin (2018), and his own compositions with his sister Sheena in 2021. He performed A Fool's Errand with poet Dermot Healy, and has lectured on Irish music at all major Universities. He was a critic with the Irish Times and Sunday Tribune, and has written, co-written and edited numerous books, best-known work the encyclopedia Companion to Irish Traditional Music, now in its third edition. In 2025, Cork University Press brought out his Beating Time, the first history of the Irish bodhrán, and this year he published a full edition of papers from the first ever conference on traditional music, Crosbhealach an Cheoil 1996. An Adjunct Professor with UCD, in 2023 he was given TG4’s Gradam Saol lifetime achievement award, is Traditional-music consultant for New Hibernia Review, and in 2026 he was given the C.B. Oldman Award for his reference work. 

Vincent Woods’s plays include At the Black Pig’s Dyke (Druid Theatre Company, 1992); Song of the Yellow Bittern (Druid Theatre Company, 1994); and A Cry from Heaven (Abbey Theatre, 2005); and for radio, The Leitrim Hotel, The Gospels of Aughamore and Broken Moon. Poetry collections are The Colour of Language and Lives and Miracles. He has co-edited The Turning Wave: Poems and Songs of Irish Australia, and Fermata: Writings Inspired by Music (with Eva Bourke); and in 2016 published Leaves of Hungry Grass: Poetry and Ireland’s Great Hunger (Quinnipiac University Press). Awards include the Stewart Parker Award for Drama and The Ted McNulty Award for Poetry. For many years he has been a regular presenter of arts programmes and documentaries on RTÉ Radio 1. Vincent was part of the Leitrim Equation performance, and the music and spoken word performances Open Room (2018) and Portal at Boyle Arts Festival in July 2019. Borderlines (with Henry Glassie) was published in 2018. He is a member of Aosdána.

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