Mona Arshi read for the 2019 John Hewitt International Summer School, alongside Zaffar Kunial.  Mona was born in 1970 to Punjabi Sikh parents in West London and grew up in Hounslow. She worked as a lawyer for Liberty UK, acting on many high-profile cases, including that of the right-to-die campaigner, Diane Pretty. She studied for […]

Niall Campbell (Scotland) read for the 2015 John Hewitt International Summer School, alongside Colette Bryce. Niall received an Eric Gregory Award and a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, both in 2011. His debut collection, Moontide (Bloodaxe, 2014), is indebted to the geography and culture of South Uist in the Western Isles, where he was born and raised. […]

Nuala Reilly (Ireland) read at the 2008 John Hewitt International Summer School in Armagh, in a showcase for the Irish language publisher, Coiscéim.   Nuala, who writes in Irish, is a native of Armagh and now lives in Derry City. She launched her first collection, “Magus Ballyrath” (Coiscéim) at the 2008 John Hewitt International Summer School in […]

Kim Moore was born in 1981 and lives and works in Cumbria, where in addition to writing, she also teaches the trumpet. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2011, the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2012 and a New Writing North Award in 2014. Her pamphlet “If We Could Speak Like Wolves” (Smith/Doorstop, 2012) was a winner in the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition and was chosen as a 2012 Independent Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Michael Marks Pamphlet Award and Lakeland Book of the Year Award. Her debut collection “The Art of Falling” (Seren, 2015) won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her second collection “All The Men I Never Married” is forthcoming from Seren in October 2021.

Jean Bleakney (Ireland) has conducted workshops and literary garden tours for the Society and she read for the John Hewitt International Summer School in 2017, alongside Lorna Shaughnessy. Jean is paired with the late Eavan Boland on the CEA’s A-level syllabus in Northern Ireland. Born in Newry, Co Down, Jean studied biochemistry at Queen’s University […]

Kathleen McCracken was born in Ontario and has lived in Northern Ireland since 1992. She is the author of seven collections of poetry and winner of the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing.