Kevin Barry

Kevin Barry was born in Limerick in 1969 and now lives in County Sligo. He is the author of four novels The Heart In Winter, Beatlebone, City of Bohane and Night Boat to Tangier, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and three story collections, most recently That Old Country Music. His awards include the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish literature, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize and the Edge Hill Short Story Award. His stories and essays have regularly appeared in the New Yorker, Harpers, Granta and elsewhere. He also writes plays and screenplays.​

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Zoé Basha

Zoé Basha is a Leitrim-based musician, composer and carpenter, of French-American origins. Drawing from her background as a traditional singer influenced and inspired by the multiple cultures embedded in her sound, Zoé Basha blends traditional Appalachian, Occitan and Irish singing with Piedmont blues and jazz. After growing up between the U.S. and France, then studying as a vocalist at Berklee College of Music in Boston where she focused primarily on blues and jazz, Zoé moved to Ireland and fell into traditional singing in Dublin. In a milieu blending political dissent, feminism, queer theory and traditional music, she made her home. Since then, she has been working on both music and carpentry between Ireland and France. In 2023, Zoé was selected by Music Network and Glór Arts Centre as the RESONATE musician-in-residence, to continue development of new works blending airs and style of Irish traditional song, rhythm and harmonies of Occitan polyphonic singing, and the sway and singing technique of Appalachian ballads, with blues and jazz music.

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley was born and raised in Buncrana, just 12 miles from the border with Northern Ireland. On joining the priesthood he found himself assigned to the cathedral parish in Derry City, arriving in the summer of 1970 as the streets were descending into chaos with the outbreak of the Troubles.
An eyewitness to the wanton violence of Bloody Sunday, Bradley was spurred to become involved in the ‘backchannel’ as one of three men who would provide a secret link between the IRA and the British government for thirty years. Fervent in their belief that dialogue would bring peace, they brokered the crucial 1993 meeting between IRA men Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly and a British Intelligence agent codenamed ‘Fred’ - a vital step on the road to negotiations which would lead to the ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement. Once played out in the shadows, Bradley’s pivotal role in Northern Ireland’s peace process was finally illuminated in his engrossing memoir Peace Comes Dropping Slow: My Life in the Troubles.

Rory Carroll

Rory Carroll is an Irish journalist working for The Guardian. He began his career at The Irish News in Belfast, working as a reporter and diarist from 1995 to 1997. As a foreign correspondent for the Guardian, he reported from the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, Latin American, and the United States. His first book, Comandante: Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, was named an Economist Book of the Year. He has also written for the Observer and The New York Times and was long-listed for the Orwell prize for his coverage of Mexico’s drug war and Haiti’s earthquake. His latest book, Killing Thatcher: The IRA, the Manhunt and the Long War on the Crown, was published in 2023 and tells the story of the Irish Republican Army bombing of the Conservative Party Conference at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Since 2018 he has been based in his native Dublin with his wife and daughter.

Brendan Conroy

Brendan Conroy is a native of Tuam, Co Galway. His career stretches back to the late 70’s when he became known playing the role of Peter Cadogan in The Irish RM. He has toured to Russia, Europe and the United States with the Abbey Theatre playing Jimmy Jack in Translations, Philly Cullen in The Playboy of the Western World and Tadhg in The Field. He worked extensively with Red Kettle of Waterford appearing in such celebrated productions as Bent, Moonshine, Talbot’s Box and Translations playing Manus and then he directed The Price and Jim Nolan’s Guernica Hotel. He last worked with them playing Shay in the Irish Arts Centre, Manhattan, in their run of The King’s of the Kilburn High Road. He created the role of Tommy Clocks in Island’s Pigtown by Mike Finn, played Arty O Leary in Livin Dred’s Belfry by Billy Roche; he has also toured with Ouroborous and Druid and played George In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with the late and wonderful Fedelma Cullen.
For the Taibhdhearc in Galway he has played in Uaisle (Aristocrats), Namhaid don Phobal (Enemy of the People) and The Kings of the Kilburn High Road as gaeilge, a part he played in the Tom Collins film Kings winning an IFTA for best supporting actor. Brendan played the role of Bill Evans in the 2023 Pat Collins film That They May Face the Rising Sun.

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Rose Connolly

Rose Connolly is a composer, performer and multi-instrumentalist from County Fermanagh. Rose grew up in a family with a long history in Irish traditional singing and in particular Ulster songs she learnt from her grandmother, the well-known singer Mary-Ann Connolly. Rose graduated from Music Composition at The Royal Conservatory, The Hague.
Her body of work includes ensemble, large-scale and small-scale works, solo pieces, electronic solo/ensemble pieces and short film/multimedia works also. Her unique sound is an idiosyncratic combination of modernist and contemporary music with inflections of Irish traditional music, folk and Jazz. Rose maintains a busy performance schedule in Ireland, performing with an array of professional musicians in both Jazz, traditional and classical contexts.

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Martina Devlin

Dr. Martina Devlin is a Tyrone-born, Dublin-based author and newspaper columnist. She has written nine novels, two non-fiction books and a collection of short stories. Her latest book, Charlotte: A Novel, focuses on Charlotte Brontë’s Irish connections. Other novels include Edith about the Irish R.M. co-author Edith Somerville; and The House Where It Happened about a 1711 mass witchcraft trial in Antrim, which led to a plaque erected in 2023 to commemorate those wrongly convicted, following a campaign she initiated. Martina has also had two plays performed. Prizes include the Royal Society of Literature’s V.S. Pritchett Prize and a Hennessy Literary Award, and she has been shortlisted three times for the Irish Book Awards. She writes a weekly current affairs column for the Irish Independent for which she has been named National Newspapers of Ireland commentator of the year, among other prizes for her journalism. She holds a PhD in literary practice from Trinity College Dublin, and has lectured there and in other universities on Irish literature.

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Caoilinn Hughes

Caoilinn Hughes is the author of The Wild Laughter (2020), which won the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her first novel, Orchid & The Wasp (2018) won the Collyer Bristow Prize and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Her short stories have won the Irish Book Awards' Story of the Year, The Moth Short Story Prize, and an O.Henry Prize. She was recently Oscar Wilde Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and a Cullman Center Fellow at New York Public Library. The Alternatives (Riverhead/Oneworld 2024) is her third novel.

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Neil Jordan

Neil Jordan was born in Rosses Point, Sligo in 1950. He was educated at St. Pauls College, Raheny and went on to study Irish history and English literature at University College Dublin. In 1974, after graduating from UCD, he co-founded the Irish Writers Cooperative. In 1976 he published a collection of his short stories Night in Tunisia through the co-operative, which won the Guardian Fiction prize in 1978. In 1982 Jordan wrote and directed his first feature film, Angel, which won the London Evening Standards Most Promising Newcomer Award. He went on to win awards for The Company of Wolves (1984), Mona Lisa (1986) and The Crying Game (1992), which won him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, as well as numerous other awards. Jordan went on to release several film adaptations of novels, including Interview with the Vampire (1994), The Butcher Boy (1997), and The End of the Affair (1999). He also wrote and directed the films Michael Collins (1996), The Good Thief (2002), Breakfast on Pluto (2005), The Brave One (2007), Ondine (2009), Byzantium (2012), Greta (2018) and Marlowe (2022). In 1996, Jordan was recognised by the French Government for his significant contributions to the arts and literature and became an “Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres”. He is the author of eight novels and a novella The Dream of a Beast (1983) including The Past (1980), Sunrise with Sea Monster (1994), Shade (2004), Mistaken (2011), The Drowned Detective (2016), Carnivalesque (2017), The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small (2021) and The Well of Saint Nobody (2023). In 2024 he published his memoir, Amnesiac.

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Richard Malone

Richard Malone (he/him, they/them) grew up in rural Ireland and identifies strongly with their working-class roots. They are an award-winning, multidisciplinary artist who features in some of the world's most prestigious museums and collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York, The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and Central Saint Martins' Museum & Study Collection in London.

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Ronan McGreevy

Ronan McGreevy is a journalist and videographer. He has worked for The Times, the BBC and Sky News. He is currently a journalist and videographer with The Irish Times. He is the author of the book Wherever the Firing Line Extends: Ireland and the Western Front. He was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his work on remembrance and the First World War. He is the editor of Centenary Ireland Remembers 1916, the official State book recalling the commemorations of 2016, and Was It for This? Reflections on the Easter Rising, an anthology of commentary on the Easter Rising, also published in 2016. He is also the presenter of the full-length First World War documentary United Ireland: How Nationalists and Unionists Fought Together in Flanders, which was shortlisted for best film at the Imperial War Museum's short film competition in 2018. He published Great Hatred: The Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson MP in 2022 and his most recent book with co-author Tommy Conlon published by Penguin is The Kidnapping: A hostage, a desperate manhunt and a bloody rescue that shocked Ireland. He is a native of Carrick on Shannon.

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Mary O'Malley

Mary O’Malley was born in Connemara and educated at University College Galway. She lived in Lisbon for eight years and taught at the Universidade Nova there. She served several years on the council of Poetry Ireland and the Committee of the Cuirt International Poetry Festival. She taught on the MA programmes for Writing and Education in the Arts at the University of Galway for many years, held the Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University in 2013, and has held Residencies in Paris, Tarragona, New York, and Trinity College, as well as in Derry, Belfast and Mayo. She has also worked on poetry translation from Irish, Spanish and Catalan. She has been active in Environmental education for over twenty years with a specific interest in the Sea and Bogland. She is a member of Aosdana and has won a number of awards for her poetry, in Ireland, the U.S. and Spain. She writes for RTE Radio and broadcasts her work regularly. She has been Writer in Association with the RHA Gallery in Dublin, and was the 2019 Writer Fellow in Trinity College Dublin. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Galway University in 2021. She has published nine books of poetry, including Valparaiso arising out of her Residency on the national marine research ship. Her latest Collection, The Shark Nursery, has just been published by Carcanet.

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Nelofer Pazira-Fisk 

Nelofer Pazira-Fisk is an award-winning Afghan-Canadian author, journalist and filmmaker. She starred in the film Kandahar, based on her real-life story premiered at Cannes Film Festival (2001), and has directed and produced several films including Return to Kandahar (2003), Act of Dishonour (2010), and This is Not a Movie which premiered at Toronto Film Festival (2019). Nelofer reported for Canadian television and radio as well as UK and Canadian newspapers from Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, Egypt and Syria. Nelofer’s 2006 book, A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of My Afghanistan, won the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize. She is a recipient of Gemini Award, New York’s Media Award, Gabriel Award and A.D. Dunton Award of Distinction. She has a degree in journalism and English literature (Carleton University), an MA in Anthropology, Sociology and Religion (Concordia University), and two honorary doctorates from Carleton and Thomson River universities in Canada. Since 2023, she’s written opinion pieces for the Sunday Independent and recently saw the completion and publication of her late husband (Robert Fisk)’s book – Night of Power. Nelofer shares her time between Dublin and Ottawa. 

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Jude Rogers

Jude Rogers is a Welsh journalist, lecturer, arts critic and broadcaster. She is a music critic for The Guardian, regularly writes features and articles for The Observer, the New Statesman and The Gentlewoman, and makes documentaries for BBC radio, most recently on nuclear war film Threads, TS Eliot's The Waste Land and Welsh choral music. Her book The Sound of Being Human: How Music Shapes Our Lives, a memoir exploring the emotional and psychological impact of music, was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year Prize and the Penderyn Music Prize. Reviewing the book, Ian Rankin wrote "Too often we treat popular music as wallpaper surrounding us as we live our lives. Jude Rogers shows the emotional and cerebral heft such music can have. It's a personal journey which becomes universal. Fascinating."

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Mohammad Syfkhan

Mohammad Syfkhan is a singer and bouzouki player originally from Syria, now based in Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim. He blends songs and music from various traditions from the Middle East and North Africa to create his own blend of ecstatic party music. He includes some modern takes of traditional and folkloric Kurdish songs, as well as some original music of his own in his live performance. His debut album was released on Nyahh Records in 2023 titled I am Kurdish.

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Vincent Woods

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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