Cork World Book Fest 2019 was one of the best yet! We are working hard on a fantastic line-up of contributors for Cork World Book Fest 2020. In the meantime, why not take a look back at some of our contributors from last year’s fest………
Writers 2019
Dr. Anatoly Kudryavitsky
Dr. Anatoly Kudryavitsky is a Russian-Irish novelist, poet, editor and literary translator and was the founder and first president of the Russian Poetry Society. He has been on the judging panel of the Dublin International Book Award. Anatoly is the editor of SurVision poetry magazine. He is the author of three novels and five poetry…
Anne Griffin
Anne Griffin is the winner of the John McGahern Award for Literature. Shortlisted for the Hennessey New Irish Writing Award and The Sunday Business Post Short Story Competition, Anne’s work has been featured in, amongst others, The Irish Times and The Stinging Fly. She has worked in Waterstones branches in both Dublin and London, and…
Billy O’Callaghan
Billy O’Callaghan was born in Cork and is the author of three short story collections: In Exile (2008, Mercier Press), In Too Deep (2009, Mercier Press), and The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind (2013, New Island Books), which was honoured with a Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award and selected as Cork’s One City, One Book for 2017. His first novel, The Dead House (2017, Brandon/O’Brien Press…
Cónal Creedon
Cónal Creedon is a novelist, playwright, documentary filmmaker and Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at University College Cork (2016-2020). His published books include: Pancho and Lefty Ride Out (1995), Passion Play (1999), Second City Trilogy (2007), The Immortal Deed Of Michael O’Leary (2015) and Cornerstone, an anthology of student writing. (ed.) UCC/Cork City Libraries (2017).…
Dr. Louis de Paor
Dr. Louis de Paor is a well-known Cork born poet in the Irish language. He has been involved with the contemporary renaissance of poetry in Irish since 1980 when he was first published in the poetry journal Innti which he subsequently edited for a time. Louis has worked alongside several other Irish language writers, such as Seán…
Nuala O’Connor
Nuala O’Connor (aka Nuala Ní Chonchúir) was born in Dublin, Ireland. Nuala lives in East Galway with her husband and three children. Her third novel, Miss Emily, about the poet Emily Dickinson and her Irish maid, was shortlisted for the Easons Book Club Novel of the Year 2015 and longlisted for the 2017 International DUBLIN Literary Award.…
Salley Vickers
Salley Vickers is the author of many highly acclaimed novels, including Cousins, Miss Garnet’s Angel and The Cleaner of Chartres. She was born in Liverpool and grew up in the Potteries, in Stoke-on-Trent, where her parents were active members of the Communist Party. She has worked as a university teacher of literature and as a psychoanalyst. …
Thomas McCarthy
Thomas McCarthy is an Irish Traveller, singer and storyteller. Originally from Birr, County Offaly, he moved to London with his family aged 10, but continued to regularly visit his Irish family in the summer. Every year his grandfather who would bring him travelling the west coast of Ireland in a barrel top wagon. Thomas has…
Kit de Waal
Kit de Waal has won numerous awards for her short stories and flash fiction. Her novel, My Name is Leon won the Kerry Group Novel of the Year 2017. She is the editor of Common People, an anthology of memoirs of working class writers, which will be published on 1 May and her latest book, The…
Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin
Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin is the founder of the award winning writing resources website, www.writing.ie, and of The Inkwell Group publishing consultancy. She is Ireland’s leading literary scout who has assisted many award winning and bestselling authors to publication. Vanessa conceived and developed the National Emerging Writer Programme for Dublin City of Literature, and was the lead…
William Wall
William Wall has published six novels, most recently Grace’s Day (2018) and Suzy Suzy (2019), three collections of short fiction including Hearing Voices Seeing Things (2016) and The Islands (2017), and four collections of poetry including Ghost Estate (2011) and The Yellow House (2017). He was the first European to win the Drue Heinz Literature…
Keith Payne
Keith Payne was the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Award winner 2015-2016. Recent collections include Broken Hill (Lapwing, Belfast, 2015); Six Galician Poets (Arc, 2016); Diary of Crosses Green, from the Galician of Martín Veiga (Francis Boutle, 2018), The Desert, from the Galician of María do Cebreiro (Shearsman, 2019) and forthcoming, Second Language, from the…
John W. Sexton
John W. Sexton was born in 1958. His latest book, Inverted Night, is a selection of his surrealist poetry and has just been published by SurVision Books. He is the author of six previous poetry collections, the most recent of which is Futures Pass (Salmon Poetry 2018). Under the ironic pseudonym of Sex W. Johnston…
Thomas McCarthy (Poet)
Thomas McCarthy began publishing poems while still an undergraduate at University College Cork, and was awarded the Patrick Kavanagh Award when he was just 24. His new collection of poems, Prophecy, explores childhood memory, romantic love and the diversity of human attachment and follows the success of critically acclaimed Pandemonium. Illness and recovery, ageing and…
Catherine Kirwan
Catherine Kirwan grew up on a farm in the parish of Fews, County Waterford. She studied law at UCC and lives in Cork where she works as a solicitor. Darkest Truth is her first novel. Like Catherine Kirwan, the protagonist of her first novel, Darkest Truth, is a solicitor working in Cork. This crime novel…
Francesca Melandri
Francesca Melandri is an Italian novelist, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker. Her literary debut Eva Sleeps (2010) was an instant bestseller, translated into most European languages. Her second novel, Right blood (2017), maps the Italian colonial past in the context of a complicated father-daughter relationship.
Daniele Serafini
Daniele Serafini is a poet, translator, novelist and museum director. He has translated works from the Irish poets Theo Dorgan, Sean Dunne, Fred Johnston, Gabriel Rosenstock, and William Wall. His most recent publication is When we were Kings (2012).
John Boyne
John Boyne is the author of eleven novels for adults, five for young readers and a collection of short stories. Perhaps best known for his bestselling book The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, John’s other novels, notably The Heart’s Invisible Furies, and A Ladder to the Sky, have been widely praised and are international bestsellers.…
Shi Yining
Shi Yining is a graduate from Sun Yat-sen University. He started to publish works in 1985, which include: a literary monography, Wu Zhuoliu – Facing the New Context; a collection of literary criticism, Heading for a New World of Literature; two collections of essays, At Nightfall and The Lake God Is Back; and a biography,…
Wang Shiyue
Wang Shiyue is an editor and novelist, a member of the National Committee of China Writers Association, vice president of Guangdong Provincial Writers Association and deputy chief-editor of magazine Works. He is also the visiting professor of Guangdong University of Finance and academic adviser of “Art Guangdong” Contemporary Art Fair. He has published many novels…
Zhang Weimin
Zhang Weimin is now the president of Jilin Provincial Writers Association, member of the National Committee of China Writers Association and Literary Criticism Committee, and a standing member of China Contemporary Literature Research Society. He is also a visiting professor of Northeast Normal University and Ph.D. mentor. For many years, he has been devoting himself…
Zhu WenYing
Zhu WenYing was born in Shanghai but has lived and worked in Suzhou since 1978. Since 1997, she has published several novels including: Aunt Lily’s Small South, Madam Dai and Blue, High Heels and Watery Marriage; and many novellas including: Prosperity, A Floating Life, Double Pupils, Havana, Staring at Marina, Intoxicated Spring Night and many…
Zou Yizhou
Zou Yizhou is the associate editor of Yan He magazine and a successful novelist. He has won many literary prizes including Lu Xun Literature Prize, Yu Dafu Literature Prize, New Literature Talent Prize of Mao Dun (founded by Chinese Literature Foundation) and Lu Yanzhou Literature Prize.
Mikkel Bugge
Mikkel Bugge (born 1978) is an author and playwright. He made his debut with the critically acclaimed short story collection Perimeters in 2007. His first novel Go Under Ground was published in 2010, and was nominated for the P2 Listeners’ Novel Prize and the Young Readers’ Critics’ Award. Bugge was awarded the Havmann Prize in 2011. His short story collection The…
