2012 Authors

Aifric Mac Aodha

Ceapadh Aifric Mac Aodha ina heagarthóir ar Comhar le déanaí agus tá sí ina heagarthóir filíochta Gaeilge ar The Stinging Fly. Tá sí ag obair ina haistritheoir leis an bhFoclóir Nua Béarla-Gaeilge. Foilsíodh a ceád chnuasach, Gabháil Syrinx sa bhliain 2010.

Aifric Mac Aodha was recently appointed editor of the Irish language magazine Comhar and is the Irish language poetry editor of The Stinging Fly. She works as a translator for the New English-Irish Dictionary. Her first collection, Gabháil Syrinx was published in 2010.

Alan Corbett

Alan Corbett  graduated with an MA in Children’s Book Illustration from Cambridge School of Art in 2010 following a BA in Graphic Design at Cork IT. Taking inspiration from classical Irish illustrators such as Harry Clarke, Richard Doyle and Daniel Maclise, he has exhibited in Ireland and the UK. He lives in Cork.

Alan Early

Born in Leitrim and now living inDublin, Alan Early studied in theNationalFilmSchool,Dun Laoghaire. Upon graduation in 2008, he co-founded Annville Films. From an early age he used to write and illustrate short stories about Banshees and ghost animals and whatever else struck his imagination. When he was ten, he visited Dublinia, a recreated Viking village and so began a love affair with Viking lore. He is the author of acclaimed Arthur Quinn series.

Alex Hijmans

Alex Hijmans (The Netherlands, 1975) is an international correspondent and author based in Salvador, Brazil. Between 1995 and 2007 he lived in Ireland, where he learnt Irish and worked as a reporter for Nuacht TG4 and RTÉ News. His books Gonta, Aiséirí and Favela are published by Cois Life.

Is comhfhreagraí idirnáisiúnta agus údar é Alex Hijmans (An Ísiltír, 1975). Chónaigh sé in Éirinn idir 1995 agus 2007, áit ar fhoghlaim sé Gaeilge agus ar oibrigh sé le Nuacht TG4 agus RTÉ News. Tá a leabhair Gonta, Aiséirí agus Favela foilsithe ag Cois Life.

Anthony Farrell

Anthony Farrell is a Dublin-based independent publisher who founded his press in Westmeath in 1984. He has brought to light over 500 works of Irish literature and history. Of these, some 150 have been digitized for e-book trading.

Alan Nolan

Alan Nolan lives and works in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland. He is co-creator of SANCHO comic and is writer and illustrator of the SKREWY SCIENCE WITH PROF. BUTTERKNUT & KRONK cartoon strip for the Irish Times. He is the author and illustrator of The Big Break Detectives Casebook and the ‘Murder Can Be Fatal’ series (The O’Brien Press). The latest instalment of the series  …And the Blood Flowed Green has just been published.

Albert Power

Albert Power is a writer, Gothic scholar, and editor of the 250th anniversary edition of Thomas Leland’s Longsword. In 2011, he edited and introduced The Complete Ghost Stories of Chapelizod by J.S. Le Fanu for Swan River Press. He has published essays on William Beckford, Ann Radcliffe, Wilkie Collins, and J.S. Le Fanu, among others, and lectured and given television interviews about Bram Stoker. In 2010, he treated in a National Library of Ireland lecture of literary affinities between Charles Maturin and Oscar Wilde. His fiction has been published by Ex Occidente Press.

Alice Taylor

Alice Taylor is one of Ireland’s most popular writers. Her books include To School Through the Fields, An Irish Country Diary, Close to the Earth, Quench the Lamp and many more. She grew up on a farm in North Cork and has lived her married life in the village of Innishannon, West Cork. In And Time Stood Still, her first book for a number of years , Alice shares her heart and soul and talks about the special people in her life and her memories of them.

Alan Titley

Alan Titley is a scholar and writer who has published novels, stories, plays and has written documentary films for television. Emeritus Professor of Modern Irish in UCC, he also spent many years as Head of the Irish Department in St Patrick’s College. He wrote and presented Scéal na Gaeilge (The Story of Irish) earlier this year.

Scoláire agus scríbhneoir é Alan Titley a bhfuil úrscéalta, gearrscéalta, drámaí, agus beagán filíochta scríofa aige. Ollamh emeritus le Nua-Ghaeilge UCC, chaith sé seal fada ina Cheann ar Roinn na Gaeilge i gColáiste Phádraig. Scríobh agus chuir i láthair Scéal na Gaeilge do TG4 níos luaithe i mbliana.

Aoife Walsh

Aoife Walsh is the editor and publisher of The South Circular, a quarterly digital e-journal of short stories by emerging writers. The South Circular also commissions front jackets from designers, illustrators, photographers and artists from around the world. Aoife is influenced by the work of Dave Eggars, Canadian and American literary magazines and their publishers and is interested in the disciplines of visual communications and bookmaking.www.thesouthcircular.com

Barry Cassin

Barry’s life in the theatre began in the days of the fit-ups when a company visited a different town every week, staging a different play each night. He had a wide-ranging acting career, also directing the first productions of John B. Keane’s ‘The Field’, ‘Big Maggie’, ‘The Year of the Hiker’ and ‘The Matchmaker’. He has appeared regularly in films including Neil Jordan’s forthcoming ‘Byzantium’.

Biddy Jenkinson

Scríobhann Biddy Jenkinson dánta, scéalta agus drámaí. Coiscéim a fhoilsíonn iad. Scríobhann sí scéalta di fén, i gcomhpháirt le Ríbó an t-ealaíontóir. Tugtar ‘scéalta do leanaí’ ; orthu sin. An mana atá aici:  ’Bí ag gáirí!’

Brian Lucey

Brian Lucey is professor of Finance in Trinity College Dublin and a prolific author and commentator on financial and banking issues. He has a BA in Economics from Trinity College Dublin, an MA in International Economics, Trade and Politics from University College Dublin and a PhD in Finance from Stirling University

Brian Colbert

Brian Colbert is regarded as one of the most prominent and successful Mind Coaches in Ireland today.  He is a Licensed Master Trainer of NLP and co-Founder of The Irish Institute of NLP. He is author of the ‘The Happiness Habit’ and his forthcoming book ‘From Ordinary to Extraordinary’ is due to be released in January 2013.

 Caitríona Ní Chléirchín

Is as Gort na Móna, Scairbh na gCaorach i gCo. Mhuineacháin ó dhúchas do Chaitríona Ní Chléirchín. Léachtóir le Gaeilge í i gColáiste na hOllscoile Bhaile Átha Cliath agus tá sí ag críochniú dochtúireachta ar fhilíocht Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill agus Biddy Jenkinson faoi láthair. Chaith sí bliain i Lyon na Fraince, ag déanamh máistreachta ar an litríocht Fhrancach agus tháinig sí go mór faoi thionchar  an écriture féminine. Tugann sí guth don tsuibiacht labhartha bhaineann ina cuid filíochta. “Liriceoir nua an ghrá”, a thug Mícheál Ó Ruairc uirthi in Comhar, Nollaig 2010.Bhuaigh a cnuasach filíochta Crithloinnir an chéad duais san Oireachtas i gComórtas na Scríbhneoirí Úra 2010. Tá sí ar an ghearrliosta do Dhuais Eithne Strong 2011. Tá dánta foilsithe aici in Comhar, Feasta agus Blaiseadh Pinn, Cyphers, The SHOp, An t-Ultach agus An Guth. Foilsíonn sí léirmheasanna, ailt iriseoireachta agus acadúla fosta.

Caitríona Ní Chléirchín is originally from Gortmoney, Emyvale in Co. Monaghan. She is an Irish-language lecturer in University College Dublin and is completing a doctorate on the poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Biddy Jenkinson at present. She spent a year in Lyon, France studying a masters in French literature and was very influenced by écriture féminine. She gives voice to the feminine speaking subject in her poetry. Mícheál Ó Ruairc has described her as the new love lyricist writing Irish poetry today in Comhar, December 2010. Crithloinnir her début collection of poetry won first prize in the Oireachtas competition for new writers in 2010. She has published poetry in Comhar, Feasta and Blaiseadh Pinn, Cyphers, The SHOp, An t-Ultach and An Guth. She also writes reviews, academic and journalistic articles in The Irish Times, Comhar, and Taighde agus Teagasc and others.

Catherine Cleary

Catherine Cleary is an award-winning journalist who writes a weekly restaurant column for The Irish Times. Her latest book, A Month of Somedays,  How One Woman made the Most of Now is a memoir of a year in which she tried out some of her ‘someday’ dreams by doing them for thirty consecutive days at a time. Now she has added fluter, sweaty yoga goer, allotment-gardener, pigeon Mandarin speaker, barefoot runner and cupcake maker to her description. She is married to Liam Reid and they live in Dublin with their three sons.

Catherine Fulvio

Catherine Fulvio is the proprietor of the Ballyknocken House Cookery School, a prolific cookery writer (with a regular column in The Sunday World) and one of Ireland’s top television culinary stars.

 Catherine Sheridan

Catherine Sheridan is a mother, grandmother, painter and latterly a children’s book author. A keen painter and student at the Blue Door Studio for several years, Catherine found that many of her later pictures were turning out to be of toys, fairies and princesses. She decided to write a story inspired by a photograph of a grandchild Jessica sitting beneath a Christmas tree.

Celeste Augé 

Celeste Augé is an Irish-Canadian writer who has lived in Ireland since she was twelve and received an MA in Writing. The Essential Guide to Flight, her debut poetry collection, was published by Salmon Poetry. In 2011, she won the Cúirt New Writing Prize for fiction. Fireproof and Other Stories was published by Doire Press in July, 2012.

Conor Brady

Conor Brady is the former editor of The Irish Times and most recently worked as one of the three Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commissioners. A June Of Ordinary Murders is his first work of fiction. He lives in Dublin.

Celine Kiernan

CELINE KIERNAN trained at the SullivanBluth Studios as a classical feature animator and has spent the majority of her working life in the film business. She is the author of the acclaimed Moorehawke Trilogy and Into the Grey which won Children’s Book of the Year 2012. Celine is also a freelance illustrator. Born and raised in Dublin, she now lives in Virginia, Co. Cavan.

Conor Kostick

Conor Kostick lives in Dublin where he teaches medieval history at TrinityCollegeand is the author of several books including Epic, Saga, Move, as well as The Book of Curses for younger readers. Conor was the recipient of a Special Merit Award at the Reading Association of Ireland Awards in 2009 for his book Move, and for his contribution to science-fiction writing in Ireland. He has achieved international success with Epic and Saga.

Constantin Gurdgiev

Constantin Gurdgiev is adjunct professor of Finance at Trinity College Dublin and head of research for St. Columbanus AG, an asset management firm. He is the chair of the Ireland Russia Business Association, lectures in the Smurfit Graduate Business School and serves as a visiting professor of Finance in the Russian State University.

Christopher Fitz-Simon

Christopher Fitz-Simon is from Belfastand has worked with RTE the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, the Irish Theatre Company and the National Theatre Society. He has lectured on Irish theatre and the arts around the world. His published work includes The Abbey Theatre: the first hundred years which used over 1,000 ‘forgotten’ images from the Abbey archive, his memoir of childhood, Eleven Houses and his most recent Buffoonery and Easy Sentiment considers  popular Irish plays of the turn of the 19th -20th centuries

Dan Boyle

Dan Boyle has had 20 years of experience of elected public office. A member of Cork City Council from 1991 to 2002, Dáil Éireann from 2002 to 2007, and Seanad Éireann from 2007 to 2011 where he was Deputy Leader. He was a lead negotiator for his party on their entering government and served as Chair of the party from 2007 to 2011, while also being the party’s spokesperson on Finance. He has served on NESC, on NESF and on the Forum on Europe. He was a member of the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly and was part of the Irish delegation to the OSCE. As a TD he was a member of the Public Accounts Committee, and as councillor was a member of the City of Cork VEC. His background is in the Community/Voluntary sector where he once served as Vice-President of the National Youth Council of Ireland. He currently is programme director with Green Foundation Ireland. He has written two books; one a history of the Green Party – A Journey To Change (2006); the other an account of its experience in government – Without Power or Glory (2012).

Darragh Doyle

Darragh Doyle helps people online. An internet addict, he is the WorldIrish.com Community Manager, working on communication, customer service, legal, marketing and PR. He is very active in Irish cultural, theatre and Festival circles as a volunteer, blogger and speaker. He tells bad jokes on twitter and likes helping to make people’s days better.

Dave Duggan

Dave Duggan is a novelist and dramatist. Originally from Waterford, he now lives in Derry. He was awarded a Major Arts Award by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 2010. His writing for film and television includes the Oscar-nominated Dance Lexie Dance. Dave’s stage plays include Gruagairí, which won a Stewart Parker Award. Guildhall Press published Plays in a Peace Process (2008), a collection of his work for Sole Purpose Productions, and his novels The Greening of Larry Mahon (2004) and A Sudden Sun (2012). His radio plays have been broadcast by BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service and RTÉ.

David Maybury

David Maybury is an editor at Inis, the children’s books magazine, the Oddbally nose-picking champion 2012 and a former judge for the Bisto Book of the Year Awards. He writes books sometimes too

Dearbhail McDonald

Dearbhail McDonald, an Eisenhower Fellow, is Legal Editor of The Irish Independent. The journalist, author and broadcaster, a former Sunday Times news reporter, has won several Justice Media Awards for her legal reporting and is a former Young Irish Medical Journalist of the Year.

In 2010 Dearbhail published “Bust – How the courts have exposed the rotten heart of the Irish economy” (Penguin). In June 2012 the Newry native completed an Eisenhower Fellowship in America, where she studied the future of journalism in the digital age

Declan Meade 

 Declan Meade has published and edited The Stinging Fly magazine since 1998. In 2005 he set up The Stinging Fly Press that he continues to run in tandem with the magazine. He has edited two anthologies of short stories, These Are Our Lives (2006) and Let’s Be Alone Together (2008). In 2004 and again in 2009, he organised the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award,Ireland’s biggest short story competition.

Deirdre Sullivan

Deirdre Sullivan is from Galway. Her first novel, Prim Improper, was released in 2010. She contributed two books (Help! My Brother is a Zombie! and Guinea Pig Killer) to Little Island’s nightmare club series in 2011. Her new novel, Improper Order will be released in February 2013. Deirdre blogs at gunstreetgirls.blogspot.ie – you can follow her on twitter- @propermiss.

Dermot Bolger

One of Ireland’s best known writers, Dermot Bolger was born in Finglas in 1959. His ten novels include The Journey Home and A Second Life. His new novella, The Fall of Ireland, is published this autumn, as is his eighth poetry collection: The Venice Suite: A Voyage Through Loss. His stage adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses is staged this autumn in Dublin’s Project Art Centre as well as in Glasgow, Belfast and Cork.  www.dermotbolger.com

 Diarmaid Ferriter

Diarmaid Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD. His books include The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 (2004), Judging Dev: A Reassessment of the life and legacy of Eamon de Valera (2007) and Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland (2009). His new book, Ambiguous Republic: Ireland in the 1970s has just been published. He is a regular broadcaster on RTE television and radio and contributes to a number of Irish newspapers.

Declan Hughes

Declan Hughes is the author of the Ed Loy PI series: The Wrong Kind of Blood; The Colour of Blood; The Dying Breed (US: The Price of Blood); All The Dead Voices; and City of Lost Girls. His books have been nominated for the Edgar, CWA New Blood Dagger, Shamus and Macavity awards, and The Wrong Kind of Blood won the Shamus for Best First PI Novel. Declan is also an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, and the co-founder of Dublin’s Rough Magic Theatre Company. Declan lives with his wife and two daughters by the sea in South Dublin,Ireland

Dervla Murphy

Dervla Murphy’s first book, Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, was published in 1965. Over 20 other titles have followed. Dervla has won worldwide praise for her writing and has been described as a ‘travel legend’ and ‘the first lady of Irish cycling’. Now in her eighties, she continues to travel around the world and remains passionate about politics, conservation, bicycling and beer.  Her next book is on Gaza.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa 

Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s poems have appeared in many journals in Irelandand internationally. She was selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions and shortlisted in Comórtas Uí Néill, both in 2011 and 2012. The Arts Council has awarded her a literature bursary. Her collections Résheoid and Dúlasair are both published by Coiscéim.

Donal Ryan

Donal Ryan was born in Newtown, north Tipperary. He studied engineering in Limerick Institute of Technology, but quickly realised he’d be a liability to any construction project and settled on a law degree instead. Donal wrote his debut novel The Spinning Heart (co-published by The Lilliput Press and Doubleday Ireland) in the long evenings of the summer of 2010.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is the author of eleven novels and collections of short stories, several children’s books, plays, and many scholarly articles and literary reviews.  She has been the recipient of many literary awards, among them the Stewart Parker Award for Drama, the Irish American Cultural Institute Award for Prose, several Oireachtas Awards for Irish language fiction, and three Bisto Awards for novels for young people.

Eina McHugh

Eina McHugh worked as a freelance journalist before moving into arts and media management. She is Director of The Ark, A Cultural Centre for Children in Dublin. She is a 2012-2013 Fulbright Visiting Scholar with the Lincoln Center Institute in New York. To Call Myself Beloved is her first book.

Eithne Shortall

Eithne Shortall is the chief arts writer for the Sunday Times Ireland. She specialises in literature, theatre, film and writes a fortnightly column on arts and heritage. She is also an occasional book reviewer for Arena, RTÉ Radio’s flagship arts radio show.

Eoin Purcell

Eoin Purcell is commissioning editor for New Island Books. he is also editor of Irish Publishing News and publisher of TheIrishStory.com a website and ebook publisher of Irish history.

Eva Osmond

Dr Eva Orsmond, MD MPH is a medical doctor with a special interest in weight management and the treatment of overweight and obesity in adults and children, appearing in programmes such as ‘Off the Rails’, ‘The Big Bite’, ‘Prime Time’, ‘The Late Late Show’, ‘Corrigan Knows Food’ and ‘Operation Transformation’. She lives in Wicklow with her husband, two sons and three dogs.

Felicity McCall

A BBC journalist for twenty years during the Northern Ireland conflict, Felicity is an occasional broadcaster, arts facilitator and actor. She is the author of many works of fiction, non-fiction, plays and a graphic novel. She is the co-founder and director of two theatre companies, and won the Tyrone Guthrie award for stage and screenplay.

Feargal Quinn

Feargal Quinn founded Superquinn, the Irish supermarket group, in 1960 and was its Managing Director for many years during which it built an international reputation for excellence in customer service. His bestselling book Crowning the Customer (O’Brien Press) is used by multi-national companies as the essential customer care manual. It has been translated into several languages.

Feargal Quinn is a board member of a number of international retailing organisations, and has received two honorary doctorates. In 1993 he was elected to the Irish Senate as an independent member. Feargal’s television series “Feargal Quinn’s Retail Therapy” has seen many small business turned around in recessionary times.

Freya McClements

Freya McClements is a BBC journalist and literary reviewer with the Irish Times. In 2006 she was shortlisted for the Orange/Northern Woman Short Story Prize. In 2009 she received an award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland to write a series of short stories which became The Dangerous Edge Of Things which Guildhall Press published in July 2012.

She is currently working on her first novel.

Fintan O’Toole

Fintan O’Toole is literary editor for The Irish Times and author of several books. Over the past two years he has chosen 99 objects which tell a history of Ireland. The articles appear every week on Saturdays in the Irish Times.

Fionnuala Fallon

Fionnuala Fallon, horticulturist, writer and garden designer, is a weekly contributor to The Irish Times. A longstanding contributor to The Irish Garden, she has written on a range of subjects. A frequent collaborator with her husband, photographer Richard Johnston, this is their first joint publication.

Garbhan Downey

 Garbhan Downey has worked as a journalist, broadcaster, newspaper editor and literary editor. He spent two years as a full-time student politician after graduating from University College Galway in 1987 and was Deputy-President of the Union of Students in Ireland. His novel Yours Confidentially: Letters of a would-be MP was listed as one of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s top seven International Crime Reads of 2008. War of the Blue Roses was columnist Eamonn McCann’s Novel of the Year for 2009. Across The Line (2012) is his sixth book for Guildhall Press.Downey lives in Derry with his wife Una and children Fiachra and Bronagh.

George Mordaunt

In late 2010, George Mordaunt’s Chamber of Commerce conference speech to politicians and Irish company chiefs brought the conference room to tears and sparked this story of how bust businesses can lift themselves out of the mire and recover. George Mordaunt is the Managing Director of the Mordaunt Group, a family business based in Clonmel, Co.Tipperary. He is married with two children. He is the author of the very successful Shepherds Pie.

Harry Clifton

Harry Clifton was born in Dublin. He travelled widely in Asia and Europe before returning to Dublinin 2004. He is currently IrelandProfessor of Poetry. His collection of poems, Secular Eden: Paris Notebooks 1994-2004 (2007), won the Irish Times Poetry Now Award in 2008. His other honours include the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and two Arts Council Bursaries in Literature. He is a member of Aosdána, the Irish artists’ association. His collection, The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass, was published by Bloodaxe this year.

Jamie O’Connell

Jamie O’Connell’s debut collection Some Sort of Beauty launched at World Book Festival in April 2012. He was the 2011 Writer in Residence for Tigh Filí Cultural Centre and was previously awarded an Artists Bursary by Cork City Council and a Travel and Training award from the Arts Council of Ireland. Reared as a Jehovah’s Witness, living in both Ireland and England, working in his early twenties as a male model and coming out as gay, these experiences have influenced his collection. He presented a copy of Some Sort of Beauty to President Higgins inAras an Uachtarain on 10 May 2012.

Jane Travers

Jane Travers has a BA in English and an MA in Film Studies, both from UCD. In 2011, she collected recipes composed on Twitter each one complete in 140 characters and Tweet Treats was born. It contains over 1000 recipes including contributions from 140 famous names and all royalties go to Médecins Sans Frontières. Follow Jane on her blog www.tweettreats.org as she collects twitter recipes, on ‘Jane Obsessed with Jane’, www.janetravers.com (which was shortlisted for the 2010 Irish Blog Awards in the Newcomer category), or on Twitter @janetravers where she now has almost 2,000 followers.

 Jarlath Killeen

 Jarlath Killeen is a lecturer in Victorian Literature in the School of English,Trinity College Dublin. He has a special interest in the Irish Gothic, and is the author of Gothic Ireland: Horror and the Irish Anglican Imagination in the Long Eighteenth Century (Four Courts, 2005), and Gothic Literature, 1825-1914 (University of Wales Press, 2009), as well as two monographs on Oscar Wilde.

Jenni Doherty

Originally from Donegal but now based in Derry, Jenni’s background ranges from publishing, journalism, bookselling and the public library service to facilitating creative writing workshops, organising literary events and performing poetry. Rain Spill will be her first solo collection, published by Guildhall Press, and supported by the Arts Council of N Ireland. Jenni currently runs Little Acorns Bookstore in Derry.

Other publishing credits include Moments (2011), Wonderful World of Worders (2007), EVE – A Celebration of Creative Women (2006) and That Land Beyond (2003), all published by Guildhall Press.

Jennifer Johnston

Jennifer Johnston is one of the foremost Irish writers of her, or any generation. She has won the Whitbread Prize, the Evening Standard Best First Novel Award, the Yorkshire Post Award, and Best Book of the Year on two occasions. She has also been shortlisted for the Booker Prize with Shadows on our Skin. Her other novels include Truth or Fiction, Foolish Mortals, The Gingerbread Woman, Two Moons and Shadowstory.

Jimmy Magee

Jimmy Magee is an institution in Irish broadcasting life. He was born in New York in 1935. Three years later the family returned to Ireland and settled in the Cooley Peninsula in Co. Louth. Jimmy’s early working experiences were in a pharmacy in Carlingford and as a railway clerk in Greenore. But his dream was always to work in radio, and by 1957 he managed to fulfil that dream.

His varied and much-travelled life, as it evolved, is told in this memoir, including his 11 Olympic Games, 12 FIFA World Cups, 29 European Cup finals, 11 athletics world championships, 30 world title fights and 10 Tours de France.

John Boyne

John Boyne is the author of 7 novels for adults and 3 for children. His most recent novels are The Absolutist and The Terrible Thing That Happened To Barnaby Brocket. His 2006 novel The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas sold more than 5 million copies around the world, won a host of international literary awards and was made into a Miramax feature film. In 2012, he was inducted into the Hennessy Literary Hall of Fame. His novels are published in 45 languages.

 John Bowman

 John Bowman is a broadcaster and historian. He has presented current affairs, historical and election-results programmes on RTÉ radio and television since the 1960s including Today Tonight in the 1980s and Questions and Answers from 1988 to 2009 when he began researching this book. His PhD, De Valera and the Ulster Question: 1917-1973, was published by Oxford University Press. A Dubliner, he was educated at Belvedere College and Trinity College Dublin. He is married to the psychiatrist, Dr Eimear Philbin Bowman. They have four children, Jonathan (deceased), Emma, Abie and Daniel.

 Joe O’Brien

 Joe O’Brien lives in Ballyfermot in Dublin with his wife and children. He is the author of the popular Alfie Green books as well as the Danny Wilde GAA series for older readers and one fantasy novel, Beyond the Cherry Tree. He has appeared on RTE’s The Den, TV3′s Ireland AM and many radio shows. His book Alfie Green and the Chocolate Cosmos was shortlisted for Children’s Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards in 2010. He regularly holds readings in bookshops and libraries around the country.

Juliet Bressan

Juliet Bressan is a doctor and a writer of novels, health articles and books on health and wellbeing. She is a television doctor with TV3 and has contributed widely to film and television abroad and in Ireland where she was the medical advisor and script consultant with the award-winning RTE drama series The Clinic.

Judi Curtain

 JUDI CURTIN grew up in Cork and now lives in Limerick where she is married with three children. Judi is the author of Eva’s Journey & Eva’s Holiday as well as the best-selling ‘Alice & Megan’ series. With Roisin Meaney, she is the author of See If I Care. She has also written three novels, Sorry, Walter, From Claire to Here and Almost Perfect. Her books have sold into Serbian, Portuguese, German, Russian, Lithuanian and most recently to Australia and New Zealand. Her latest book is Leave it to Eva.

John F. Deane

John F. Deane was born in Achill Island  in 1943. He founded Poetry Ireland and The Poetry Ireland Review, 1979 and has published several collections of poetry and some fiction. He has won may awards for his work, including  the O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry, and the Marten Toonder Award for Literature. He has been shortlisted for both the T.S.Eliot prize and The Irish Times Poetry Now Award and is a member of Aosdána. His latest collection of poems is Eye of the Hare, Carcanet 2011. Snow falling on Chestnut Hill: New & Selected Poems is published this year.

 Brian Gallagher

BRIAN GALLAGHER is a full-time writer whose plays and short stories have been produced in Ireland, Britain and Canada. He has written extensively for radio and television and for many years was one of the scriptwriters on RTÉ’s Fair City. He collaborated with composer Shaun Purcell on the musical, Larkin, for which he wrote the book and lyrics, and on Winds of Change for RTÉ’s Lyric FM. His first book of historical fiction for young readers was Across the Divide, set in the 1913 Dublin Lockout, followed by Taking Sides, set against the background of the Civil War. His brand new book Secrets and Shadows is set in Ireland during WWII. Brian lives with his family in Dublin.

 John Givens

 Native Californian John Givens teaches fiction writing in Dublin. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Givens studied art and language in Kyoto for four years, and worked in Tokyo as a writer and editor for eight years. Givens’ published novels are: SONS OF THE PIONEERS, A FRIEND IN THE POLICE, and LIVING ALONE. His short story collection, THE PLUM RAINS, was published in Dublin by The Liffey Press.

John Joyce

 Art meets marine biology when ‘Black John the Bogus Pirate’ teaches students of all ages how to draw cartoons. Presented by author and cartoonist John Joyce, these workshops require no previous knowledge of drawing. John will also be signing copies of his latest novel ‘Fire & Ice’ at the Festival.

John Kenny

John Kenny has had fiction published in Emerald Eye: The Best of Irish Imaginative Fiction, Transtories, The World SF Blog, First Contact, FTL, Woman’s Way, Jupiter Magazine and other venues. He has been co-editor of Albedo One since 1993 and co-administrator of its International Aeon Award for Short Fiction since 2005. Previous to that he edited several issues of FTL (1990 – 1992). He has also edited Writing4all: The Best of 2009 and Box of Delights, an original horror anthology from Aeon Press Books. As a freelance editor, he has worked on both novels and short stories with recent work done for Bruce McAllister, Nuala Lyons, Taylor Grant and others. www.johnrichardkenny.com

Judith Mok

Judith Mok was born in the Netherlands. She has published three novels and four books of poetry as well as short stories. She has written for radio and newspapers. Her work has appeared nationally and internationally in literary magazines and anthologies. She travels the world working as a classical singer.

Joyce Russell

Joyce Russell grew up in the Yorkshire Dales and in 1978 moved to Bantry in west Cork to live the self-sufficiency dream. She has won or been shortlisted on multiple occasions for the Sean O Faolain Short Story Award, The Real Writers International Award, and the START Chapbook prize, the Bridport Prize, the RTE Francis MacManus Short Story Competition and the FISH Short Story Competition. She is a founder member of Friends of the Earth Ireland and is co-author with her husband, Ben, of The Polytunnel Book.

Juliette Saumande

Juliette is French but she lives in Dublin, because she has a passion for wet summers and toasted sandwiches. She’s written over twenty picturebooks (published in France). She loves liquorice, but she thinks Crunchies should be banned and their recipe thrown into a bottomless chasm.

www.juliettesaumande.com / www.juliettesaumande.blogspot.com

John Walsh

 John Walsh was born in Derry but now lives in Connemara. He’s published three collections of poetry, including, Chopping Wood with T.S. Eliot  (Salmon Poetry). He has read at events in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Sweden and the USA. He is organizer and MC of North Beach Nights in Galway, Ireland’s leading monthly performance poetry event. Border Lines is his debut short story collection

John Waters

John Waters, newspaper columnist, author, playwright and songwriter, was born in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, in 1955. He pursued a variety of occupations after leaving school, including railway clerk, showband roadie, pirate radio manager, petrol pump attendant and mailcar driver. He began part-time work as a a journalist in 1981, with Hot Press,Ireland’s leading rock ‘n’ roll periodical, becoming a full-time journalist with the paper in 1984, when he moved to Dublin. As an journalist, magazine editor and columnist, he has specialised in raising unpopular issues of public importance, including the repression of Famine memories and the denial of rights to fathers. His other books include, Jiving at the Crossroads  (Blackstaff,1991);Race of Angels (4th Estate/Blackstaff,1994):Every Day Like Sunday? (Poolbeg, 1995); An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Ireland (Duckworth 1997); The Politburo Has Decided That You Are Unwell, (Liffey, 2004); Lapsed Agnostic (Continuum, 2007); Beyond Consolation (Continuum, 2010); Feckers (Constable and Robinson, 2010) and Was It For This? (TransWorld, 2012). He has written plays for radio and the stage, including Long Black Coat, (1994), Holy Secrets, (BBC, 1996), Easter Dues, (1998), and Adverse Possession (BBC,1998). He has been a columnist with the Irish Times for the past 22 years and currently also writes columns for The Irish Mail on Sunday, The Irish Catholic, and Tracce/Traces, the international magazine of the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation.

Kemberlee Shortland

Kemberlee Shortland is a native of Northern California who has lived in Ireland since early 1997. Writing since childhood, Kemberlee got her start in the digital publishing market in the early 1990s with one of the first digital book publishers who saw an opening in the market for electronically published fiction. There, Kemberlee worked as a first reader and quickly moved into editing and proofreading. During this time, she also worked as a book reviewer, served two terms as President with Reviewers International Organization (RIO Reviewers), and trained would-be reviewers on all aspects of the craft of book reviewing. Kemberlee has worked as a researcher for author’s wishing to set their books in Ireland, she’s written and published many travel articles and essays on Ireland and Irish history, and worked as a graphics and web designer. All the while, writing fiction has been her passion and has published several novels and short stories. With all of her prior experience, 2012 saw the official launch of Tirgearr Publishing which Kemberlee runs with her husband, Peter. Tirgearr Publishing is currently Irelands only all-digital publisher of adult genre fiction which enjoys an international market.

Lee Henry

Lee Henry was born in 1981 and grew up in Newcastle, County Down.  He studied English Literature and History at Manchester Metropolitan University, and currently works as Web Editor of Culture Northern Ireland.org.  He lives with his wife in Belfast.

Lilly Higgins

Lilly Higgins is a Graphic Designer, a Ballymaloe trained chef and an enthusiastic food blogger. She’s taught at the Ballymaloe cookery school and produced set designs and food styling for the TV show ‘Fancy Vittles’ with her sister Maeve, a well known comedian.

Liz Gillis

Liz Gillis is from Dublin and worked as a local history researcher in the St. Nicholas of Myra centre from 2004 to 2006, during which time she collaborated on a number of exhibitions relating to the history of Dublin. She now works in Kilmainham Gaol as a tour guide. In 2009 she gave a presentation on the burning of the Custom House in May 1921 at the Military History Society’s conference on the War of Independence. She also organises walking tours on the history of the Dublin 8 area.

Lorcan Collins

Lorcan Collins was born and raised in Dublin. He founded the hugely popular 1916 Walking Tour in 1996. He co-authored The Easter Rising: A Guide to Dublin in 1916 (O’Brien Press, 2000) with Conor Kostick. Lorcan lectures on Easter 1916 in the United States. He is also a regular contributor to radio, television and historical jour­nals. 16 Lives is a ground-breaking series of biographies of the sixteen executed leaders of the Easter Rising and was Lorcan’s concept. He is co-editor of the series as well as the author of the first book of the series James Connolly.