Artists: Dromineer Literary Festival 2012

Playwright and novelist Patrick McCabe was born in 1955 in Clones, County Monaghan, Ireland. He was educated at St Patrick's Training College in Dublin and began teaching at Kingsbury Day Special School in London in 1980. His short story 'The Call' won the Irish Press Hennessy Award. 

 

He is the author of five novels including The Butcher Boy (1992), a black comedy narrated by a disturbed young slaughterhouse worker, which won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction; The Dead School (1995), an account of the misfortunes that befall two Dublin teachers; and Breakfast on Pluto (1998), the disturbing tale of a transvestite prostitute who becomes involved with Republican terrorists. The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto were both shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.

 
He is also the author of a children's book, The Adventures of Shay Mouse (1985), and a collection of linked short stories, Mondo Desperado, published in 1999. His play Frank Pig Says Hello, which he adapted from The Butcher Boy, was first performed at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1992. The play is published in Far from the Land: Contemporary Irish Plays (1998), edited by John Fairleigh. A film adaptation of The Butcher Boy directed by Neil Jordan was first screened in 1996. His short stories have been published in the Irish Times and the Cork Examiner and his work has been broadcast by RTÉ in Ireland and the BBC. 
 
Patrick McCabe lives in Sligo in Ireland with his wife and two daughters. His novel, Emerald Germs of Ireland (2001), is a black comedy featuring matricide Pat McNab and his attempts to fend off nosy neighbours. His novel, Winterwood, was published in 2006, and was named the 2007 Hughes & Hughes/Irish Independent Irish Novel of the Year. His latest novel is The Holy City (2008).

PAT BORAN was born in Portlaoise, Ireland in 1963 and currently lives in Dublin. He has published four collections of poetry: The Unwound Clock (1990), which won the Patrick Kavanagh Award, Familiar Things (1993), The Shape of Water (1996) and As the Hand, the Glove (2001). His New and Selected Poems appeared from Salt Publishing in 2005 and was reissued, with minor revisions, by Dedalus in 2007.

 
In addition to poetry he has published a collection of short stories, Strange Bedfellows (1991) and his short fiction title for children includes All the Way from China (1999) which was a finalist for the Bisto Book of the Year Award.
 
His non-fiction titles include the writers' handbook The Portable Creative Writing Workshop (1999/revised and expanded 2005) and A Short History of Dublin (2000). His memoir The Invisible Prison: Scenes from an Irish Childhood, was published in 2009.
 
A former editor of Poetry Ireland Review and presenter of The Poetry Programme on RTÉ Radio 1, he has also edited Wingspan: A Dedalus Sampler (2006), Flowing, Still: Irish Poets on Irish Poetry (2009), The Bee-Loud Glade (2009) and Shine On, in support of mental ill health. His new collection of poems The Next Life appears in 2012. A member of Aosdána, he received the Lawrence O'Shaughnessy Poetry Award in 2008.
 
"A writer of great tenderness and lyricism" — Agenda
"Amongst the most tantalising poetry being written in Ireland" — Fortnight

Fiona Sampson’s most recent books include a new edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley for Faber (2011, Poetry Book Society Book Club Choice) and Music Lessons: The Newcastle Poetry Lectures (2011). She is published in more than thirty languages, and her eleven books in translation including Patuvachki Dnevnik, awarded the Zlaten Prsten (Macedonia, 2004).

 
In 2009, she received a Cholmondeley Award and was elected an FRSL; she has since been elected to the Council of the Royal Society of Literature.  She has received the Newdigate Prize, Writer’s Awards from the Arts Councils of England and of Wales and from the Society of Authors, and been shortlisted twice for both the T.S. Eliot Prize and Forward prizes. 
 
Fiona Sampson works as a translator and editor (her A Century of Poetry Review was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation) and contributes regularly to The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent and the TLS. She is currently Distinguished Writer at the University of Kingston and Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and this year she serves as a judge for the Griffin Prizes and the Cholmondeley Awards. 
 
Her critical survey of contemporary British poetry, Beyond the Lyric (Chatto) appears this September, and her next collection, Coleshill, also from Chatto, in January 2013.

Alan Hayes is publisher of Arlen House, one of Ireland’s oldest literary imprints, and a member of the management team of Dublin UNESCO City of Literature. He was a judge of the 2009 EU Prize for Literature; founder of the Dublin Book Festival and its former Artistic Director, and former President of Publishing Ireland during its most successful period. His books include Hilda Tweedy and the Irish Housewives Association (Arlen House, 2012), Pauline Bewick at 75 (Arlen House, 2010), Cúirt 21 (Arlen House/Cúirt, 2006),Women Emerging (NUIG, 2005), Irish Women’s History (Irish Academic Press, 2004), The Irish Women’s History Reader (Routledge, 2001) and The Years Flew By (Arlen House, 2000). He is currently researching a biography “John Brennan” and Her Sisters and a history of Irish feminist and literary publishing.

Madeleine D’Arcy was born in Ireland and later spent thirteen years in the UK. She worked as a criminal law solicitor and as a legal editor in London before returning to Cork City in 1999 with her husband and son.

 
She began to write fiction in 2005.
In 2010 she was presented with a Hennessy Literary Award for First Fiction as well as the overall Hennessy Award of New Irish Writer.
Her work has been short-listed in various other competitions, including the Bridport Prize (UK), the William Trevor/Elizabeth Bowen Short Story Competition, the Fish Short Story Prize and the Bryan MacMahon Short Story Competition. She’s working on a novel
 
http://blog.saltpublishing.com/2012/03/07/scottprize-shortlist-in-profile-madeleine-darcy/
 
http://blog.saltpublishing.com/2012/03/07/scottprize-shortlist-in-profile-madeleine-darcy/

 James Martyn Joyce

James Martyn Joyce is from Galway where he is a member of The Talking Stick Workshop. His work has appeared in The Cúirt Journal, West 47, Books Ireland, Crannog, The Sunday Tribune, The Stinging Fly and The Shop. He has had stories broadcast on RTE and BBC and has won the Listowel Writers Week Originals Short Story Competition. He was shortlisted for a Hennessy Award in 2006. He was shortlisted for the Francis McManus award in 2007 and 2008 and The William Trevor International Short Story Competition in 2007 and 2011. His first collection of poetry, Shedding Skin was published by Arlen House in 2010. His collection of short stories, What’s Not Said is published by Arlen House in 2012.

 Elizabeth Reapy

EM Reapy graduated from the MA in Creative Writing programme at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Queen’s University, Belfast.

In 2009 she was shortlisted for Over the Edge: New Writer of the Year award.
Her short fiction and poetry has been featured in various Irish, British and American publications.
In 2010, she co-founded and is current editor of wordlegs.com who have just recently released a two part ebookwww.wordlegs.com/30under30.
In 2011, she was awarded the Tyrone Guthrie Centre Regional Bursary by Mayo Arts Council and she was selected as the Irish Exchange Writer 2012 in Varuna Writers' House Sydney.
Her short film Lunching, is being produced by Barley Films animation studio.
She is working on a feature length screenplay and hopes to publish a collection of short stories in 2013.

 Leeanne Quinn 

(Photograph by Monika Chmielarz)

 
Leeanne’s poems have been published in a variety of journals and magazines including The Irish Times, The SHOp, Crannóg and The Stinging Fly, and anthologised in The Bee-Loud Glade: a living anthology of Irish Poetry (Dedalus, 2011). 
Before You, her debut collection of poetry, was published by Dedalus Press in February 2012. She lives in Dublin

 Eleanor Hooker (Photograph by Olly Griffin)

She is a founding member and Vice-Chairperson of the Dromineer Literary Festival. She is a helm and Press Officer for the Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. She began her career as a nurse and midwife.  In early 2011 she was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series and also to attend Fiction Master Classes in Trinity College Dublin. In February 2012, her debut collection of poetry, The Shadow Owner’s Companion was launched by The Dedalus Press.
          

 The Bee-Loud Glade

The Bee-Loud Glade is an electrifying cabaret show that combines music, song and performance with exciting spoken word. Presented by composer and performer Roger Gregg in partnership with Dedalus Press, the Bee-Loud Glade takes a cross-section of contemporary and classic Irish poems from the page onto the tumbling stage. It's a rollercoaster cabaret in which the written word meets the performing arts.