CHRIS AGEE

Chris Agee was born in 1956 in San Francisco and grew up in Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island. He attended Harvard University and since 1979 has lived in Ireland. He is the author of three books of poems, In the New Hampshire Woods (Dublin, The Dedalus Press, 1992), First Light (The Dedalus Press, 2003) and Next to Nothing (Salt, 2009), which was shortlisted for the inaugural Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry earlier this year. He was the editor of Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia (1998), a Poetry Society Recommendation. He also edited Unfinished Ireland: Essays on Hubert Butler (2003) and The New North Contemporary Poetry from Northern Ireland (2008). He is the Editor of Irish Pages, a journal of contemporary writing based at The Linen Hall Library, Belfast. 

ARMAGH RHYMERS

Armagh Rhymers are one of Northern Ireland’s most celebrated folk theatre ensembles and have delighted audiences all over the world with their unique blend of music, drama, song and dance. Their OASES programme (based on a quotation from a poem by John Hewitt, Over us All is the SElfsame Sky) is an exciting new cross community/cross border project where children come together using science (astronomy) and art (dance/music/movement) to share knowledge, experiences and ideas. This project is part-financed by the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund through the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation managed by the Special EU Programmes Body.

JO BAKER

Jo Baker was born and grew up in Lancaster, educated at Oxford and Queen’s University, Belfast, where she did her PhD, and now teaches creative writing at Lancaster University. She is the author of three novels, Offcomer (2001), The Mermaid's Child (2004), both published by Heinemann, and The Telling (2008), published by Portobello. Her short stories have been included in a number of anthologies and she is currently at work on her fourth novel, developing a radio play for the BBC and working on an adaptation for television of Charlotte Bronte's novel, Shirley.

Jamie Blake Knox is a Phd student in Trinity College, Dublin. His undergraduate degree was in History and History of Art at U.C.D. Under the supervision of James McGuire he continued at UCD to write an MLitt in History entitled The Fairest of Wars: an analysis of the correspondence between William Bedell, Joseph Hall and James Waddesworth as published by Bedell in 1624. After moving to Trinity he began work on an M Phil in Irish Art History entitled The Whole Mosaic - John Hewitt and the Ulster Unit, which has formed the basis for his current paper. His ongoing research is primarily concerned with developments in the historiography of Church of Ireland historians active in TCD during the course of the nineteenth century.

EAVAN BOLAND

A pioneering figure in Irish poetry, Eavan Boland was born in Dublin in 1944 and studied in Ireland, London and New York. She has taught at Trinity College, University College Dublin, and at the University of Iowa. She is currently a Professor of English at Stanford University where she directs the creative writing programme. Her first book was published in 1967 and Boland's other works include The Journey and other poems (1987), Night Feed (1994), The Lost Land (1998) and Code (2001). Her poems and essays have appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Kenyon Review and American Poetry Review. Her awards include a Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry, an American Ireland Fund Literary Award and an honorary degree from TCD.

CONOR BRADY

Educated at the Cistercian College, Roscrea and UCD, Conor Brady joined The Irish Times on graduation. He worked with RTE radio and television during the 1970s and '80s. He has been editor of The Garda Review, The Sunday Tribune and The Irish Times. He is a visiting professor at the City University of New York and senior teaching fellow at the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business at UCD. Conor is a member of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission and is on the executive committee of the British-Irish Association. He is author of Guardians of the Peace, a history of policing in Ireland, and Up with the Times, an account of his experiences as editor of The Irish Times.

TIM BRANNIGAN

Tim Brannigan was born in Belfast in 1966, and spent the first year of his life in St Joseph's Baby Home, before being adopted by his birth mother. He studied politics at Liverpool Polytechnic and returned to Belfast in 1990 where he began training for a career in the media. He went on to become an award-winning journalist, working as a reporter for GMTV's Northern Ireland bureau in 1994 and then as a features writer for the Irish News until 2000. He still lives in Belfast where he works as a freelance journalist and commentator. His memoir, Where Are You Really From?, was published by Blackstaff Press in March 2010.

JOHN D BREWER

John D. Brewer is Sixth-Century Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen and President of the British Sociological Association. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (2004), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2008), an Academician in the Academy of Social Sciences (2003) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (1998). He has held visiting appointments at Yale, St John’s College Oxford, Corpus Christi College Cambridge and the Australia National University. He is the author or co-author of twelve books and editor or co-editor of a further three. His latest book is Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach (Polity, 2010) and he is currently writing up an ESRC-funded project on the role of the churches in Northern Ireland’s peace process, entitled Religion, Civil Society and Northern Ireland’s Peace Process.

DARAGH CARVILLE

Daragh Carville is an Armagh-born playwright and screenwriter. This Other City, produced by Tinderbox Theatre Company, opened in Belfast in April 2009 and his other plays, which include Language Roulette, Observatory and Family Plot, have been widely produced in Britain and Ireland, and abroad. He has also written for film, television and radio. His television drama about drugs awareness issues for young people, The Family, was first broadcast on BBC2 in 1998 and his radio play, Regenerations, was nominated for the Richard Imison Award. Daragh’s feature films include Middletown, which was cited as one of the Irish films of the decade by the Irish Times in December 2009, and Cherrybomb, and he is currently working on Tiger, a feature film for BBC Films, to be directed by Middletown director, Brian Kirk.

NOLLAIG CASEY

Nollaig Casey is one of Ireland's most gifted musicians, with an international reputation for playing Irish traditional music and classical music with equal proficiency. She was a member of the RTE Symphony Orchestra before she joined the legendary Planxty in 1980 and toured with them in Ireland, UK and Europe. Her television appearances include the BBC TV series "Bringing it All Back Home" and "A River of Sound". Nollaig has also performed with Donal Lunny's Coolfin band and as a soloist with 'Riverdance' on tour. She has worked and recorded with Enya, Mary Black, Christy Moore and Sharon Shannon, among many others. Her solo album, The Music of What Happened, garnered universal critical acclaim and she has recorded two duo albums with Arty McGlynn.

MIKE CATTO

Mike Catto trained as an art historian in his native Scotland and has lived in Northern Ireland since 1968. From then until 2005 he was a senior lecturer in art and media history at what is now the University of Ulster at Belfast. He and John Hewitt wrote Art in Ulster volumes 1 and 2 respectively in 1977. In addition to writing several books and many articles and essays on art and media, Mike Catto has been a regular broadcaster and critic on art, design and film since the 1970s.

LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES

Louis de Bernières, who lives in Norfolk, has held various jobs including landscape gardener, mechanic, officer cadet at Sandhurst and schoolteacher in both Colombia and England. He published his first novel, The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, in 1990 and was selected by Granta magazine as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. Since then he has become well known internationally as a writer, and his second book, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best Book Eurasia Region, while his third book, The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, was published in 1992. Captain Corelli's Mandolin (1994), won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Novel. A Partisan's Daughter (2008), was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and his latest book, Notwithstanding: English Village Stories, was published in Autumn 2009. As well as writing, he plays the flute, mandolin, clarinet and guitar, and performs regularly with the Antonius Players.

EAMON DELANEY

Eamon Delaney is a writer and commentator, based in Dublin, where he has been the editor of Magill magazine, covering political and cultural affairs. He is the author of An Accidental Diplomat, about his time in the Irish Foreign Service and The Casting of Mr O’Shaughnessy, a novel about Irish art and history. Most recently he has published Breaking the Mould – a Story of Art and Country, which explores the cultural atmosphere of Ireland in the 1960’s and 70’s.

MICHAEL DORAN

Michael Doran is the Director of Action Renewables. Previously he worked for Rural Generation where he was the Business Development Director. A Chartered Surveyor, he graduated from the University of Salford in 1978. He has been on the N.I. Council of the RICS in several capacities, and is the Past Chairman of the International Environment Faculty of the RICS. He is also a Chartered Environmentalist, a qualified Project Manager and a Member of the Institute of Directors. He was the Irish representative on AEBIOM, the European Biomass Association from 2002 to 2006 and was on the Energy Crops Committee of DG Agriculture until 2005. He is also the secretariat of the renewables division for the Green New Deal.

TERRY EAGLETON

Terry Eagleton is widely regarded as Britain’s most influential living literary critics.  He is Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University and Visiting Professor at NUI, Galway and the University of Notre Dame. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He has written more than forty books and these include his books of literary criticism include Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983) and After Theory (2003)., a novel, Saints and Scholars (1987) and The Gatekeeper: A Memoir (2001). His latest books are How To Read A Poem (2006); The Meaning of Life (2007); and Trouble with Strangers: A Study of Ethics (2008).  His plays have been produced in Ireland and London.

ANNE-MARIE FYFE

Anne-Marie Fyfe, poet, creative-writing teacher, arts-organiser & former Chair of the Poetry Society, (2006-2009), was born in Cushendall and now lives in West London. She has published three volumes of poetry, including The Ghost Twin (2005) with a New and Selected forthcoming from Seren Books in 2010. She won the Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition (2004) with her poem Curaçao Dusk. She has been Aldeburgh's Poetry Trust Writer-in-Residence (2003) and established Coffee-House Poetry at the Troubadour in 1997. She has been co-organiser of the John Hewitt Spring Festival in the Glens of Antrim since 2003.

JOHN GILLILAND

John Gilliland, a farmer in the North West, is Chair and a Director of Rural Generation Ltd., a Development Company, designing sustainable renewable energy and waste management systems, both in Ireland and in New York State. From 2002 – 2004 he was President of the Ulster Farmers’ Union, and he has represented the agri-business sector at numerous meetings with all levels of Government, the EU and worldwide economic bodies. In 2005, having been appointed the N. Ireland Sustainable Development Commissioner by Prime Minister Blair, John Gilliland was asked to chair the London Government’s top advisory committee on climate change agriculture, forestry and food, the Rural Climate Change Forum, and, most recently, he represented DEFRA and the UK Government at the Agriculture and Forestry Days during the recent Copenhagen Climate Change Negotiations.

BOSCO HOGAN

Bosco Hogan is not only one of the finest Irish stage actors of his generation but has also established a strong and growing reputation in the world of film and television. Dividing his time between Dublin and London has given him a high profile in both cities and makes him one of the most effective ambassadors for the world of Irish arts and entertainment. He has just finished a British and Irish tour of Tom Murphy’s The Sanctuary Lamp for b*spoke Theatre Company. His rich and powerfully effective speaking voice has been a distinctive feature of all his work and his consummate skill and wide versatility have made him one of the most sought after and respected actors in Irish theatre and television. Hogan's range has stretched from roles in the repertoire of classic writers such as Shakespeare, Chekhov and Wilde, to the innovative contemporary work of Frank McGuinness and Jennifer Johnston.

CHRIS HUDSON

Chris Hudson, who was ordained as a Unitarian Minister in All Souls Non- Subscribing Presbyterian Church in Belfast, in 2005, was born into a strong Fianna Fáil and Catholic family background in Co. Dublin. Non-conformist in many ways, he has been a hairdresser, actor, postman, writer, and, for 18 years, a trade union organiser. Honoured by Queen Elizabeth II for his work for peace in Northern Ireland, he has had a keen interest in issues related to the developing world and has travelled to India, Pakistan, Brazil and Central America. He was for a number of years a Trustee for Oxfam Great Britain and Honorary Chair of Oxfam Ireland for 4 years.

IMAGE 10+

Image 10+ is a photographic collective based in the Belfast area. There is a wide range of experience base in the collective, from complete novice to professional photographer and many levels in between. Members are encouraged to bring their work to be reviewed in an atmosphere of support and advice. The collective invites guest speakers from time to time and they arrange regular field trips. One of their aims is to photograph our heritage before it is lost to redevelopment and they have produced exhibitions featuring places such as The Maze Prison, Harland and Wolff, Armagh Gaol, The Titanic Drawing Offices and Rathlin Island.

ILONE ANTONIUS JONES

Ilone Antonius Jones was born and educated in Southern Germany and now lives and teaches music in Oxfordshire. She has performed in both Germany and in the United Kingdom. Although her first love is the flute she also teaches piano, and plays piano, organ and cello. She graduated from the University of Nürnberg, where she performed in many bands and orchestras and has regularly appeared with her two sisters, who are also flute players. Balancing a busy family life and teaching career, Ilone loves to perform both as a soloist and with the Antonius Players who have been working with the author Louis de Bernières since 2002. In collaboration, they have delighted audiences all over the UK and abroad with their unique blend of poetry and music.

TONY KENNEDY

Tony Kennedy is Director of the John Hewitt Society. Previously he was Chief Executive of Co-operation Ireland for 16 years until his retirement in 2008, and before that working in public sector housing in Northern Ireland and England from 1972. Tony is a voluntary member of a number of Boards including the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, where he chairs the Audit Committee, the N I Community Relations Council, where he is chair of the Policy and Communications Committee, the Centre for Cross Border Studies, and Ulidia Housing Association. He is the father of three children, and has two grandchildren.

LANDING PLACES

In March 2010, the Dedalus Press, Dublin, published Landing Places: Immigrant Poets in Ireland, edited by Eva Bourke and Borbála Faragó. This is a timely and important anthology of poems by sixty-six poets, both recent arrivals and second-generation immigrants all over the world, who have made their homes in Ireland, North and South, and who contribute to, challenge and ultimately broaden the definition of what is thought of as ‘writing from Ireland’. To mark the Northern launch of Landing Places, one of the featured poets, Chris Agee will introduce a poetry reading by five of the other poets included in this welcome anthology: Matt Kirkham, Chris Nikkel, Sabine Wichert, Alex Wylie and Ann Zell.

BILLY LEONARD

Billy Leonard was born into a Unionist / British background but now describes himself as a very contented Irishman, committed to a united Ireland. He was the incoming Chairperson of the SDLP when he left to join Sinn Féin in 2004. He has served on Coleraine Borough Council and was the first ever Sinn Féin candidate to be elected on to that body. He then became an MLA in 2010 and serves on the Culture Arts & Leisure and the Regional Development Committees at the Assembly. He has a doctorate in Politics and Philosophy from the University of Ulster in which he examined moral attitudes to state and paramilitary violence during the ‘troubles’. A major section of that study involved examination of Bloody Sunday, the Hunger Strikes and the republican ‘campaign’ against the Ulster Defence Regiment.

MICHAEL LONGLEY

Michael Longley is a central figure in contemporary Irish poetry. A member of Aosdána, he is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a recipient of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry and the Wilfred Owen Award. His collections include, No Continuing City: Poems 1963-1968, Poems 1963-1983, The Echo Gate: Poems 1975-1979 (1979),Gorse Fires (1991), winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award, and The Weather in Japan (2000), which won the Hawthornden Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Belfast Arts Award for Literature. He is editor of 20th Century Irish Poems (2002). His Collected Poems was published in 2006. In 2007, he was appointed Professor of Poetry for Ireland, and his inaugural lecture, A Jovial Hullabuloo, published in pamphlet form in the same year.

CONALL MCDEVITT

Conall McDevitt is the SDLP's youngest MLA (since January 2010) and the party's health spokesperson. Born in Dublin he spent his formative years in Malaga, Spain. He was Director of Communications for the SDLP from 1996 to 1999, a time that included the negotiations running up to the Good Friday Agreement, subsequent referendum and assembly elections. He served as a Special Adviser in the first Power Sharing Executive, advising the Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development. He is a former Managing Director of Weber Shandwick and also a former Chairperson of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. Conall McDevitt has signed up for Platform For Change, a new Northern Ireland movement whose signatories believe that now is the time for a new politics focused on the common good.

ARTY MCGLYNN

Guitarist, Arty McGlynn, was born in Co. Tyrone. His family was steeped in traditional music, but when his mother bought him his first guitar at the age of eleven, it was the great jazz guitar masters that he studied, and by the age of fifteen, he was already playing professionally in various groups and dance bands. In the mid- seventies, Arty revived his interest in Irish traditional music and his first solo album, "McGlynn's Fancy", was released in 1979 to great critical acclaim. He subsequently became one of the most sought after musicians in the country, playing and recording with the likes of Christy Moore, Paul Brady, Nollaig Casey and Liam O'Flynn. He played as a member of such prestigious groups as Planxty, Patrick Street and De Danann.

BLAKE MORRISON

Blake Morrison was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, and after working for the Times Literary Supplement, he went on to become literary editor of both The Observer and the Independent on Sunday before becoming a full-time writer in 1995. He is the author of two best-selling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? and Things My Mother Never Told Me and three acclaimed novels, South of the River, The Justification of Johann Gutenberg and, most recently, The Last Weekend. He is also a playwright, librettist, critic and poet, and his poetry collections include Dark Glasses, The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper and Pendle Witches. Since 2003, Blake has been Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

CHRIS NEWMAN

Chris Newman, guitarist, has played folk music since childhood but explored the jazz scene in his late teens, playing with and learning from people like Stephane Grapelli and Diz Disley. After a brief foray into the commercial world, he resolved to concentrate on his first love, the acoustic guitar and his solo CD, Fretwork, was widely acclaimed. An ex-member of Boys of the Lough, he has toured widely with Máire Ní Chathasaigh and has produced many successful albums for other folk artists.

MÁIRE NÍ CHATHASAIGH  

Máire Ní Chathasaigh is Ireland’s most influential harper. As a teenager in Co. Cork she invented an entirely new style that quickly became the norm among her contemporaries. A multiple All-Ireland and Pan-Celtic winner, in 1885 she recorded the very first harp album to concentrate on Irish dance music, The New-Strung Harp. In 2001 she received Gradam Cheoil TG4 as Traditional Musician of the Year. Since 1988 she has toured worldwide with Chris Newman, and they released their sixth CD, Firewire, in 2007.  

JOSEPH O’CONNOR

Award-winning author, Joseph O’Connor, was born in Dublin in 1963 and has published six novels including The Salesman, Inishowen, Desperados, the Whitbread Prize-shortlisted Cowboys and Indians and Redemption Falls which was shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the Year and IMPAC awards. His 2002 novel, Star of the Sea, became an international bestseller, winning many awards including the Prix Madeleine Zepter for European Novel of the Year. His other works include a collection of short stories, True Believers; a nonfiction travelogue, Sweet Liberty: Travels in Irish America; and several collections of journalism, the most recent of which, The Irish Male: His Greatest Hits, included some of his popular radio contributions to RTÉ’s Drivetime.  He has also written criticism, screenplays, and stage plays including Red Roses and Petrol, The Weeping of Angels and True Believers.

MALACHI O’DOHERTY

Malachi O'Doherty is a Belfast-based writer, broadcaster and one of Northern Ireland's best-known journalists and cultural commentators. He specialises in political commentary and radio reportage, and is a former editor of Fortnight Magazine. He is a regular contributor to BBC Northern Ireland programmes including Talkback, Hearts and Minds and Sunday Sequence. His fifth book, a memoir, Under His Roof, was published last December by Summer Palace Press. Malachi's other books are: The Trouble With Guns (1998), I Was A Teenage Catholic (2003) and The Telling Year: Belfast 1972 (2007) and Empty Pulpits: Ireland's Retreat from Religion (2008).

DENNIS O’DRISCOLL

Dennis O’Driscoll, poet and critic, was born in County Tipperary in 1954. He has edited and compiled contemporary quotations about poets and poetry, and has published a collection of essays and reviews as well as Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney. He has published eight collections, including New and Selected Poems (2004), which was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation, and his latest collection of poems, Reality Check (2008), which was shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Now Prize. Among numerous anthologies in which his work appears are Staying Alive (Bloodaxe), Scanning the Century (Penguin), and 20th Century Irish Poems (Faber). His awards include a Lannan Literary Award in 1999 and the 2005 E.M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

NESSA O’MAHONY

Nessa O’Mahony was one of the first writers in Ireland to complete a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing. She has published two collections of poems, Bar Talk (iTaLicS Press, 1999) and Trapping a Ghost (bluechrome, 2005). A verse novel, In Sight of Home, was published by Salmon Poetry in May 2009 and she is currently working on a memoir of her grandfather, Michael McCann. She has taught creative writing for JHISS, the Open University, the Irish Writers Centre and University College Dublin and is a regular facilitator of creative writing workshops in Ireland and the UK.

SHARON OLDS

Sharon Olds, regarded by many as America's greatest living poet, was born in San Francisco in 1942 and for 40 years has lived in New York, where she was State Poet from 1998-2000. Her numerous honours include a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Her work has been anthologised in more than 100 collections and she has won poetry's most prestigious awards - the San Francisco Poetry Center award, the Lamont Poetry prize and the National Book Critics Circle award. She also won the TS Eliot prize for The Father (1992) and was shortlisted for the same award earlier this year for One Secret Thing (2009). Her other collections include Satan Says (1980), The Dead & the Living (1983), Strike Sparks: Selected Poems (2004, Knopf), The Unswept Room (2002), Blood, Tin, Straw (1999), The Gold Cell (1997) and The Wellspring (1995).

DAVID PARK

David Park, born in Belfast, was awarded the 2008 American Ireland Fund Literary Award for his contribution to Irish Literature. He is the author of a collection of short stories and six novels including The Healing (1992), The Rye Man (1994), Stone Kingdoms (1996) and The Big Snow (2002). Swallowing the Sun (2004) was shortlisted for both the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and the Irish Novel of the Year Award. His latest novel, The Truth Commissioner (2008), was broadcast on Radio 4's 'Book at Bedtime', was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction and Irish Novel of the Year awards, and won the Christopher Ewarts-Biggs Memorial Prize which recognises works that promote peace and reconciliation in Ireland.

GLENN PATTERSON

Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast and was educated there and at the University of East Anglia where he studied for an MA in Creative Writing under Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter. His first novel, Burning Your Own was published in 1988 and won a Betty Trask Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Fat Lad was short-listed for the Guinness Peat Aviation Book Award in 1992 and he has since published five more novels, the most recent of which was The Third Party (2007). Other publications include Lapsed Protestant (2006) and Once Upon a Hill: Love in Troubled Times (2008). Glenn has been Writer in Residence at the University of East Anglia, UCC and QUB and has lecturing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. A member of Aosdána, he has presented numerous television documentaries and an arts review series for RTE.

PAUL PERRY

Paul Perry, born in Dublin in 1972, has won the Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year Award and The Listowel Prize for Poetry and has been a James Michener Fellow of Creative Writing at The University of Miami, and a Cambor Fellow of Poetry at The University of Houston. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, TLS, Granta and The Best American Poetry 2000. He has been a Writer in Residence for Co. Longford, the University of Ulster, and Rathlin Island. His first book The Drowning of the Saints was published in 2003 to critical acclaim and his much-anticipated second collection, The Orchid Keeper, confirmed the promise of the first. His third collection, The Last Falcon and Small Ordinance, was launched in Dublin in May 2010.

HEATHER RICHARDSON

Heather Richardson was born in Northern Ireland in 1964. She moved to England when she was eighteen, and after university worked in a range of jobs, from bus driver in Leicester to marketing executive at a private hospital in Harley Street. In 1993 she finally went home to Belfast. A former winner of the Brian Moore Short Story Award, her short fiction and poetry have been published in magazines and anthologies in the UK and Ireland. Her first novel, Magdeburg, was published by Lagan Press earlier this year. She teaches creative writing for the Open University.

JOHN SWEENEY

Born and raised in Scotland, Professor John Sweeney, has been a lecturer at the Geography Department NUI Maynooth, since 1978. His research interests include climatology, climate change and air pollution and over the past 30 years he has published approximately 60 scientific papers and edited/co-authored 4 texts on various aspects of climatology and climate change in Ireland. He has served a number of national academic societies as President, Secretary and Treasurer as well as being the Irish representative on a number of European academic bodies. He currently leads a number of nationally funded research projects examining various aspects of climate change in Ireland. As one of the contributing Authors and Review Editors of the recently published Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he shared with several hundred other climatologists the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

EOGHAN WALLS

Eoghan Walls was born and raised in Derry and is a graduate of UCD.  He completed his PhD at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at the Queen’s University, Belfast. Over the last ten years he has taught English in Germany, Belfast and rural Rwanda. He has published poems in various journals throughout Britain and Ireland including Poetry London, Poetry Ireland Review, Fortnight and The London Magazine and The Naming of the Rat was published in New Writers 14 (Granta Books, 2006). He is currently working on his first collection, The Salt Harvest, with the generous help of the Irish Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon), which is due out with Seren in 2011. He won an Eric Gregory award in 2006, and was this year shortlisted for the Crashaw Prize.

LOUISE WELSH

Louise Welsh is an award-winning writer living and working in Glasgow. Her first novel, The Cutting Room, won several awards, including the 2002 Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger. Her other work includes the novella, Tamburlaine Must Die (2004) and two novels, The Bullet Trick (2006) and the recently published Naming the Bones, set in the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. She is a regular radio broadcaster, has published many short stories, and has contributed articles and reviews to most of the British broadsheets. She has also written for radio and the stage.