Sam Blake is a multiple No. 1 bestselling Irish crime writer and has been shortlisted for Irish Crime Novel of the Year three times, and twice for Irish Teen and YA Novel of the Year.

Her second YA novel, Something's About to Blow Up, was Winner of the International Education Services Teen & YA Novel of the Year 2024.

Her latest adult thriller, The Killing Sense, came out in January 2025 and is a No. 1 bestseller.

Follow Sam on social @samblakebooks or find out more at samblakebooks.com, where you can join her Reader's Club and receive her adult thriller High Pressure for free.

Sam is the founder of Ireland's International Crime Writing Festival, Murder One. She is currently Chair of the board of the Society of Authors, and previously was Chair of Irish PEN and a board member of the Crime Writers Association.

Photo Credit: Sam Blake

Dermot Bolger is the author of fifteen novels including The Journey Home, An Ark of Light, The Lonely Sea and Sky, The Family on Paradise Pier and, most recently, Hide Away.

His debut play, The Lament for Arthur Cleary, received the Samuel Beckett Award. Numerous other plays include his adaptation of Joyce’s Ulysses, and Last Orders at the Dockside, both staged by the Abbey Theatre.

The author of ten poetry collections, Bolger received the 2021 Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Award for Poetry and, in 2022, received an honorary doctorate in Literature from the National University of Ireland.

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Photo Credit: Dermot Bolger

Susan Boyle is a drinks consultant, researcher, writer and performer. An award-winning member of the British Guild of Beer Writers, Susan is an international drinks judge and is currently pursuing a PhD.

She was awarded the Outstanding Speaker Prize at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery and the OSFC Julia Childs Foundation Award. As a Fulbright Fellow, in 2024 Susan pursued research at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, Washington DC.

Together with her sister Judith, Susan founded Two Sisters Brewing. They brew Brigid’s Ale, which is sold in their family pub in Kildare Town and other select locations.

Judith Boyle is a beverage lecturer at Technological University, Dublin, an accredited beer sommelier, chemist (MSc.) and publican. Judith regularly contributes to Irish television and radio. A champion of artisan produce, Judith has a keen understanding of the drinks industry from both sides of the counter. She takes a rigorous, analytical and fun approach to drinks and drinks education.

One half of Two Sisters Brewing, Judith is an international spirits and beer judge, has consulted government bodies on food and drinks policies, and is an award-winning member of the Guild of Beer Writers and a member of the Champagne Academy.

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Kimberly Campanello's most recent poetry collection An Interesting Detail is published by Bloomsbury Poetry.

Her debut novel Use the Words You Have is the inaugural title from Somesuch Editions, the imprint of BAFTA and Oscar-winning production company Somesuch.

Extracts from her work-in-progress, This Knot: A new version of Dante’s Commedia with the poet K, have appeared or are forthcoming in Firmament, Poetry Ireland Review, Still Point and Notre Dame Review.

She is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds.

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Pauline Clooney is an award-winning writer and founder of the Kildare Writing Centre.

Her short fiction has received widespread recognition, most recently winning the 2024 Dingle Literary Festival Short Story Competition.

She is a recipient of the Arts Council Agility Award and a former winner of the RTÉ Guide/Penguin Ireland Short Story Competition.

Photo Credit: Pauline Clooney

During her 15-year career as Ireland's State Pathologist, Marie Cassidy became known to the Irish public as a trusted figure whose expertise helped to solve murders and clarify unexplained deaths. In over thirty years of practice, she performed thousands of postmortems and dealt with hundreds of murders. She has witnessed the burgeoning role of forensic science and the impact that has had on death investigation and the expectations of the general public, while embracing new technology and welcoming the input of experts in the other sciences. She retired at the end of 2018 to spend more time on the other passions in her life, her family and writing.

Marie is the author of two number one bestselling books: her memoir Beyond the Tape (2020) and her debut novel Body of Truth.

Photo Credit: Paul Stewart

Keith Donald’s career in music spans five decades and began with performance on BBC radio when he was ten. He is best known as the saxophonist with seminal Irish traditional band Moving Hearts, but his first love is jazz and he has returned to it repeatedly throughout his life.

He has played with hundreds of artists, including Louis Stewart, Zoot Sims, Maire Breathnach, Ronnie Drew, Van Morrison and Vusi Mahlahsela. His musical career has taken him all over the world, from Johannesburg to New York and every major city in Europe.

His memoir, Music and Mayhem (Lilliput 2025), charts the immersive and explosive life of one of Ireland’s most important musicians, and the golden decades of Irish music he was at the centre of.

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Aingeala Flannery is the author of The Amusements (Penguin), which won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2023 and the John McGahern Prize. Her short stories and personal essays have appeared in The Irish Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Paper Visual Art, and The Winter Papers, and have been broadcast on RTÉ Radio One. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from University College Dublin and has been Deputy Publisher of The Dublin Review since 2019. Aingeala is the recipient of two Arts Council of Ireland literature bursaries.

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Catherine Gander is an academic, critic, and poet. Her most recent publications are Matches (Verve Poetry Press, 2024), and The Edinburgh Companion to Don DeLillo and the Arts (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).

She is co-editor with Stefania Heim of the creative-critical anthology Beyond Ourselves, Contemporary Poets on Muriel Rukeyser, forthcoming in 2026 from West Virginia UP, and featuring work by internationally acclaimed poets, among them Solmaz Sharif and Daniel Borzutzky.

She is Associate Professor in the English Department of Maynooth University.

Photo Credit: Catherine Gander

Hazel Gaynor is an award-winning New York Times and internationally bestselling author of historical novels which explore the defining events of the 20th century. A recipient of the 2015 RNA Historical Novel award and the 2024 Audie award for Best Fiction Narrator, she was also shortlisted for the 2019 HWA Gold Crown, and the Irish Book Awards in 2017, 2020 and 2023. She is a regular speaker at literary festivals, co-founder of The Inspiration Project, and programmed and hosted a series of Historia Live events in association with Dublin UNESCO City of Literature in 2024.

She has written for Time Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. The Last Lifeboat was an Irish Times bestseller, a Times Historical Novel of the Month and won the 2024 Audie award for Best Fiction Narrator. Her latest novel Before Dorothy was a USA Today bestseller and was chosen by The Washington Post as one of five noteworthy historical novels in June 2025. Her co-written historical novels with Heather Webb have all been published to critical acclaim. Hazel’s work is translated into 20 languages and she is published in twenty-seven territories to date.

She lives in County Kildare with her family.

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Cian Geoghegan is a writer and filmmaker from Maynooth, County Kildare. His work is concerned with the interconnected nature of culture, expression and community. His latest film Childhood premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh, and tells the story of a former child soldier living in Ireland and raising his own children.

As a recipient of the Dennis O’Driscoll Literary Bursary Award, Cian has developed Stouted, a novella. The project follows Anker, a Danish Erasmus student studying in Ireland, whose romantic Joycean vision of the country is tested by the tangible social issues he encounters daily. Anker's denial of reality leads him down an absurd path, as he neglects his studies to craft the perfect literary pub crawl.

Cian holds a BA in Film & Broadcasting from TU Dublin and an MA in Critical and Creative Media from Maynooth University.

Photo Credit: Cian Geoghegan

Catherine Ryan Howard is an award-winning, no. 1 bestselling thriller writer from Cork, Ireland. Her novels have been included in the New York Times Best Thrillers of the Year, the Washington Post’s Best Mysteries and Thrillers of the Year and the Sunday Times Best Thrillers of the Year. She is published in 20 languages and a number of titles are being developed for screen.

An adaptation of her lockdown thriller, 56 DAYS, starring Dove Cameron and Avan Jogia, will debut exclusively on Amazon Prime Video in early 2026.

Her latest novel is Burn After Reading.

Photo Credit: Bríd O'Donovan

Razan Ibraheem is an Irish-Syrian journalist with expertise in verifying social media content and media literacy. She has worked with Kinzen and Storyful News Agency and provided research for The New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning visual investigation in 2020. Razan is a regular contributor to Irish radio and TV programs, and her work has been featured in local and international media outlets. Razan was named International Woman of the Year by Irish Tatler in 2016.

Photo Credit: Razan Ibraheem

Margaret Kane-Rowe, an award-winning scriptwriter, and finalist in Outstanding Screenplays, The Script Lab, Filmmatic and Nashville Film Festival, writes, directs, produces, and is an arts facilitator based in Kildare.

Among her awards are the Short Grass Film Fund (2025) for Holly, and the Short Grass Film Bursary (2019) for Duck Egg Blue, both from Kildare County Council.

In 2020 she received the South Dublin County Council Film Award for her short thriller, Mask, and the Ardan Directors Bursary for Shadow Fable.

Her films have been nominated and shortlisted in film festivals throughout Ireland, and worldwide, including Best International Short at Focus Wales film festival, a BAFTA-qualifying festival.

Photo Credit: Amanda Gentile

Shane Kenny is a broadcaster and journalist who worked as a frontline presenter and editor for RTE, the Irish national broadcaster, for 30 years.

He was a presenter/reporter for the historic 7 Days television current affairs programme, a presenter/editor of RTE radio’s This Week, the first presenter of the News at One in its current form from 1988–1994, and the anchor for election broadcasts from 1987–1992.

As editor of the News Features unit in the RTE News Division (1982–87), he created, named, and launched Morning Ireland in 1984. He was the first editor and a presenter of the programme during its first year.

He was co-author with Fergal Keane of Irish Politics Now (1987), and author of the bestseller Go Dance on Somebody Else’s Grave (1990).

He won the Irish National Media Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism in 1989.

During the years 1994–97 he served as Government Press Secretary in John Bruton’s Rainbow Government, before returning to RTE. Under the Rainbow (2024), his account of that government, is his third book.

In 2003 he established his own independent media business in production and training, and continued as a freelance broadcaster with RTE. From 2005–11 he was Director of Public Affairs and member of the Executive Board of Dublin City University.

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Brendan MacEvilly is the author of At Swim: A Book About the Sea, and his debut novel, Deep Burn, is forthcoming in September 2025.

His fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Channel, the Honest Ulsterman, the Guardian, the Irish Times, and Sunday Times.

He is director and co-editor of Holy Show, an annual arts journal and production company. He is the 2024–27 Emerging Curator in Development at Kilkenny Arts Office.

Brendan was born and lives in Dublin.

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Lisa McInerney is the author of three novels: The Glorious Heresies, The Blood Miracles and The Rules of Revelation.

She has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the RSL Encore Award and the Premio Edoardo Kihlgren for European literature. She is published in 12 languages.

In 2022, she was appointed editor of The Stinging Fly.

Photo Credit: Bríd O'Donovan

Eoin McNamee is the author of eight novels including Resurrection Man, later filmed, and the Blue Trilogy.

His work has been nominated for and won many major prizes including the Man Booker Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, the Kerry Fiction Prize, and the CWA Steel Dagger.

Liam McIlvanney said of McNamee's prose that it has the 'cadenced majesty of McCarthy or DeLillo, but the vision it enacts is all his own.'

He is the Director of the Trinity College Oscar Wilde Centre. He will be reading from and speaking about his acclaimed new novel, The Bureau.

Photo Credit: Eoin McNamee

Belinda McKeon is the author of the novels Solace and Tender, and editor of the anthology A Kind of Compass: Stories on Distance. She has received the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Irish Book of the Year Award, and has been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize and the Encore Award.

Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in journals including The Paris Review, Granta, A Public Space, and The Stinging Fly, and she worked for many years as an arts journalist with The Irish Times.

She is also a playwright, currently working on a project with Fishamble Theatre Company, supported by the Arts Council's Markievicz Award. She comes to Maynooth from Rutgers University in the United States, where she has taught fiction since 2014. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programme. Belinda is Associate Professor in Creative Writing in Maynooth University.

Photo Credit: Alen MacWeeney

Castledermot-born John MacKenna is the author of twenty-four books. His twenty-fifth, a novel called The Lock-keeper's Wife, will be published in early 2026 by Lilliput Press.

He is a winner of the Irish Times; C Day Lewis; Hennessy and Leitrim Guardian Awards for his writing, and a Jacobs Radio Award for his documentary work with Leonard Cohen.

He has written a number of stage and radio plays. His play Lucinda Sly (RTE Radio 1) won a silver medal at the Worldplay Festival in New York.

He is a regular broadcaster on Sunday Miscellany and teaches creative writing at The Hedge School on the Moone.

Photo Credit: John MacKenna

Roxana Manouchehri is an Iranian-Irish visual artist, curator and translator based in Dublin. She received an MFA in fine art from the Tehran University of Art. She teaches art in universities and museums worldwide and has exhibited her work in several solo shows internationally.

Roxana is the recipient of a Diversity Award jointly awarded by the Solstice Arts Center and the Arts Council of Ireland in 2021. She is a member of the ArtNomads collective and founder of Transnational Arts Ireland.

She has translated Non-Dubliners by Jinoos Taghizadeh from Persian to English and Why the moon travels by Oein DeBhairduin from English to Persian.

This Is Not a Cookbook is her first book.

Photo Credit: Roxana Manouchehri

Andrea Mara is a Number One Sunday Times, Irish Times, and Kindle bestselling author, who has been shortlisted for Irish Crime Novel of the Year at the An Post Book Awards for five of her books. Her books have sold over 900,000 copies across all formats.

Her most recent novel, It Should Have Been You, was a number 1 bestseller in Ireland for five weeks, and a Top Ten bestseller in the UK hardback charts.

Someone In The Attic, published in June 2024, went straight to number 2 on the Irish bestseller list. It was published in the US in August 2024, her US debut. The New York Times said: “[Mara] lays out the pieces of the puzzle with diabolical wit, some good suspense and an unexpected note of sentimentality.”

Her previous novel, No One Saw A Thing, was a Number One bestseller in the UK, in Ireland and on Kindle, a Richard and Judy Book Club pick, and has sold over half a million copies. In Ireland, No One Saw A Thing spent five months in the Original Fiction Top Ten followed by seven months in the Paperback Top Ten.

Her novel All Her Fault was Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month, a top ten bestseller in the UK and Ireland, and a Kindle Top 5 bestseller. It has been adapted for TV for Universal / Peacock, starring Sarah Snook in her first TV role since Succession.

She lives in Dublin, Ireland, with her husband and three children.

Photo Credit: Andrea Mara

A graduate of UCD, Róisín Ní Neachtain is a writer and artist living in Kildare. Her third poetry collection is forthcoming with Broken Sleep Books.

Her work has placed and been shortlisted in a number of competitions including the Red Line, The Aryamati Poetry Prize for chapbooks and the Fish Publishing Poetry Competition.

She has been published by Abridged, Firmament (Sublunary Editions), The Honest Ulsterman and with Poetry Jukebox at IMMA.

In her painting practice, she has been mentored by Brian Maguire and exhibited nationally.

Photo Credit: Róisín Ní Neachtain

Roisin O’Donnell is an award-winning Irish author. She won the prize for Short Story of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards in 2018, and was shortlisted for the same prize in 2022.

She is the author of the story collection Wild Quiet, which was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and shortlisted for the Kate O’Brien Award.

Her first novel Nesting was published in January 2025 to widespread critical acclaim, with the Sunday Times selecting it as one of the best books of 2025 so far. Nesting has become an international bestseller and was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Nesting recently featured as the Book at Bedtime on BBC Radio Four.

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Rick has been a radio presenter with RTE since 2001 – he currently presents weekday afternoons on RTE Gold. He has a weekly book column in the Irish Independent and runs The Rick O’Shea Book Club online – Ireland’s largest book club with over 40,000 members.

Rick spends the rest of his time interviewing authors at festivals and curating literary events. He has been literary curator of the UCD Festival since 2020 and has previously been a judge at the Costa Book Awards, Dalkey Literary Awards, Dublin Fringe, and at the Irish Book Awards.

Photo Credit: Ruth Medjber

Craoltóir, ceoltóir, údar agus eagarthóir is ea Tristan Rosenstock. Tá sé ina Chlár Reachtaire le RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta agus cuireann sé an clár ealaíon ‘An Cúinne Dána’ i láthair. Ón mbliain 2017 i leith tá sé ina eagarthóir liteartha ar an iris Comhar. Roghnaíodh a chéad leabhar Inis Mara le haghaidh Lá Domhanda na Leabhar 2024. Chuir sé féin agus Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh an leabhar Inside Innti - A new wave in Irish poetry in eagar. Tá an domhan siúlta aige i dteannta an ghrúpa Téada.

Tá sé pósta ar an údar Sadhbh Rosenstock agus tá beirt léitheoirí óga acu - Maud agus Joni.

Photo Credit: Tristan Rosenstock

Fionnán Sheahan is Ireland Editor of the Irish Independent and a presenter of the Indo Daily podcast.

He has worked in a series of roles in Mediahuis Ireland, formerly Independent News and Media, including Editor and Political Editor of the Irish Independent.

Fionnán has won several awards for his print and digital journalism and is a regular contributor on TV and radio.

A native of Co Tipperary, he now lives in Dublin with his family.

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Fiona Sherlock is a bestselling author and journalist from County Meath. She is the author of the crime novels Twelve Motives for Murder, Supper for Six, and Death Visits January. Fiona recently completed a Master’s in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge, where she focused on hybrid memoir and the legacy of Irish writer Mary Lavin.

Her short stories and poems have appeared in The Irish Times, Telegraph, Sunday Independent, and Banshee and she also creates immersive murder mystery games. She writes about memory, place, and identity - or whatever else will stop her reorganising the kitchen drawers again.

Photo Credit: John Shortt Photography

Eithne Shortall is the author of five internationally published, bestselling novels including Grace After Henry, Three Little Truths and The Lodgers. Her books have won several prizes, including Best Page-Turner at the UK’s Big Book Awards, and twice been nominated at the Irish Book Awards. She was the Arts Council's 2024 John Broderick writer in residence. She is a former arts journalist with the Sunday Times and continues to write occasional columns and contribute to radio.

Photo Credit: Eithne Shortall

Shane Sullivan is a singer/songwriter based in Athy, Co Kildare. He has appeared on numerous TV programmes and has toured the United States a number of times.

He has also appeared in two major productions of works by Leonard Cohen: Between Your Love and Mine, which did two national tours including the NCH and Áras an Uachtaráin, and At War With Mercy.

He is currently working on a new show based on his own songs.

Photo Credit: Shane Sullivan

Tramp Press was launched by Lisa Coen and Sarah Davis-Goff in 2014 to find, nurture and publish exceptional literary talent. Tramp Press is based in Ireland and publishes internationally. Authors include Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Mona Eltahawy, Sara Baume, Mike McCormack, Sophie White, and Jade Sharma.

Tramp Press authors have won Irish Book Awards, the International DUBLIN Literary Award (formerly the IMPAC), the Goldsmiths Prize, the Rooney Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, a Lannan Fellowship, the Davy Byrnes Award, the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and the Kate O’Brien Award. They have been nominated and shortlisted for many more, including the Booker Prize, the Costa, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Michel Déon Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Guardian First Book Award, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize.

Photo Credit: Bríd O'Donovan

Jessica Traynor is a poet, dramaturg, essayist, and poetry editor at Banshee.

Her third poetry collection Pit Lullabies (Bloodaxe, 2022) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, an Irish Times book of the year, and a Guardian Best Summer Read of 2022. It was shortlisted for the Yeats Society Sligo/Irish Independent Poetry Prize.

She was 2024 recipient of the Tundish Award from Field Day for contributions to the arts in Ireland and the 2023 recipient of the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry.

She was 2023 Arts Council Writer in Residence in Galway University, a judge for the 2023 Forward Prizes, and is a critic for The Irish Times.

Her fourth poetry collection, New Arcana, was published from Bloodaxe Books in September 2025.

Photo Credit: Jessica Traynor

Dr Christina Wade is a beer historian specialising in the hidden histories of the brewing trade, especially the role of women. She received her doctorate in History from Trinity College Dublin in 2017, and since its completion has been researching the story of Irish beer. In 2025, her book on this subject, Filthy Queens: A History of Beer in Ireland, was published with Nine Bean Rows.

Additionally, in 2024 her book, The Devil’s in the Draught Lines: 1000 Years of Women in Britain’s Beer History, was published with CAMRA Books; and won Best Book About Beer or Pubs 2024 at the British Guild of Beer Writers Awards.

Wade has spent much of her time writing about women and beer history on her website Braciatrix, which was shortlisted for an Irish Food Writing Award in 2022 and has recently launched a Substack newsletter of the same name. A BJCP Certified Beer Judge, Wade is also the resident historian, audio editor, and co-host of the Beer Ladies Podcast, which was recently featured in Vinepair and shortlisted in the podcast category for the 2023 Irish Food Writing Awards. Additionally, she founded the Ladies Craft Beer Society of Ireland in 2013, which has grown to over 1,400 members at time of writing.

Besides her blog and podcast, Wade has written for BEER Magazine, The Medieval Dublin Series, The Journal of Franco-Irish Studies, TheTaste.ie, and Beoir Magazine. She currently sits on the League of Historians at the Beer Culture Center and has spoken about her beer history research at their annual Beer Culture Summit.

In addition, Wade has presented her work around the world, at events like Electric Picnic, the Ballymaloe Festival of Food, the International Medieval Congress, The Beverage Research Network Conference, the Women's International Beer Summit, Indie Beer Feast, Sheffield Beer Week, Friends of Medieval Dublin Lunchtime Lecture Series, The FemAle Beer Festival, Alltech Brews and Food Fair, BrewCon, and the Killarney Beer Festival.

Photo Credit: Christina Wade