Island of Many Voices - 20 Participants Announced

Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and The Linen Hall (Belfast) are pleased to announce the 20 writers who have been selected to participate in six online workshops, curated and facilitated by writer-facilitator Fiona O’Rourke:

Geraldine Walsh

Geraldine is an author and journalist who frequently contributes to the Irish Times. She is a facilitator with the Irish Writers Centre, and author of Unraveling Motherhood. Her fiction has appeared in Frazzled Lit, The Storms, Aimsir, and Agenda, amongst others. She is a 2024 awardee of the Irish Writers Centre National Mentoring Programme and the 2025 International Lamplight Fellowship. Her work has been longlisted and shortlisted in various competitions, including the Fish Flash Fiction prize, the Bridport Short Story and Flash Fiction Prizes, and the Four Faced Liar Short Story Prize.

Emma Cummins

Emma writes fiction and essays. She won the Tyrone Guthrie Centre Bursary 2025-6, funded by Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council, and was shortlisted for Fish Publishing’s Short Memoir Prize 2021. She is the former manager of the Guardian Bookshop and currently works freelance for Belfast Book Festival.

Jo Morrigan Black

Jo is a Paris-born writer and performance poet, whose work dwells in journals such as Abridged. Showcased by Culture Ireland at Edinburgh Fringe 2025, their solo show CARPET MUNCHER combines poetry, physical theatre and surrealist costuming to celebrate the queer and the unknowable in us all.

Lisa Walsh

Lisa Walsh is a playwright and holds an MA in Creative Writing. Lisa’s work has been supported by the Arts Council, The Abbey New Writers Department, Dr Marina Carr and Axis Theatre, Ballymun. Lisa has recently been selected for The Mavens Playwright Programme - 2026.

Byddi Lee

Byddi is the author of Barren, The Rejuvenation Trilogy, March to November. She writes short fiction, plays and screenplays and was selected for BBC Writersroom Voices 2023. She co-founded Flash Fiction Armagh, is supported by the Arts Council NI and holds professional membership of the Irish Writers Centre.

Olivia Rana

Olivia has a PhD in English and Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast and has published two novels. She has been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, Fish Publishing Short Memoir Award, and the Wild Atlantic Words Short Story Award. Her work has also been broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster.

Ger Duffy

Ger Duffy lives in Co Waterford. Her poems have appeared in Under the Radar, Banshee, The North, Verve anthology, P N Review, Propel, Southword, Crannog, Washing Windows III, IV & V, The London Grip and 14 Magazine. She won the Desmond O Grady and the Redline Poetry Awards. She was selected for Poetry Ireland Introductions in 2025.

Paddy McCurdie

Paddy McCurdie is a writer from County Armagh. In 2024, he was a Northern Soul Roadshow awardee, a bursary recipient for the John Hewitt International Summer School and his work was selected for Flash Fiction Armagh. He has been published by the Community Arts Partnership and the Belfast Review.

Anne McDonald

Anne McDonald is an award-winning poet, playwright and festival curator. Her poetry collection Crow's Books was published in 2020. She has been published widely in print and online journals and broadcast on RTÉ Radio. She has performed in theatres in Ireland and the UK. Anne was winner of the 12th Annual Bangor Poetry Competition 2025 & The Keshkerrigan Short Story Competition 2025.

Daniel Wade

Daniel Wade is an author from Dublin. His theatre credits include The Collector and Florence is Burning. He is also the author of the poetry collections Iceberg Relief and Rapids, the novel A Land Without Wolves, and the hybrid collection Wake of the Whale, co-authored with Alice Kinsella.

Rob Kelly

Rob Kelly is a queer, trans writer from Northern Ireland who writes speculative fiction, specifically horror and fantasy. He was a runner-up for the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2022 and enjoys writing stories that focus on finding the strange and supernatural in the ordinary and our relationship with nature.

Bernie McQuillan

Bernie McQuillan lives in Belfast. The Lobster Pot, her debut Donegal mystery novel, publishes in April 2026 (Indie Novella). A former caver, her second novel (Caving for the Lost and Found) is under development, with support from NI Arts Council. A chapter won the Book Edit Writers’ Prize 2024.

Deirdre Devally

Deirdre Devally has an MA in Creative Writing from UL. Competition listings include: The Dark Poets Award 111, Fish and Cúirt. Publications include The Stony Thursday Book, Skylight47 and The Storms. She has received a Literature Bursary and been awarded mentorships from Clare Arts Office, Glór and Munster Literature Centre.

Alina Kostenko

Alina Kostenko is a Roma poet and facilitator living in Dublin. She explores memory, inheritance, and exile through a lyrical, autobiographical lens, tracing silence and survival, myth and truth. She attended The Stinging Fly Summer School for Creative Non-fiction and she is completing her first hybrid collection, with poems published both in English and Romanian journals.

Anna Zuccaro

Anna Zuccaro is an Italian-born writer and poet based in Dublin. In 2025, she was shortlisted for the Irish Writers Centre's International Debut Novel Competition and selected for The Stinging Fly's Ten by Ten Workshop. Her fiction explores migration, addiction, and social marginality, blending lyricism with gritty realism in a hybrid Irish English voice.

Dean Lee

Dean Lee is an emerging minority ethnic and Queer writer. With the support of Arts Council NI, Dean is currently working on their memoir, Made in -China- Northern Ireland, 1974. As an experienced Counsellor, Community Worker and Carer, Dean's ongoing determination is to use creative writing as an instrument for peace.

Jennifer Herron

Jen’s work has been featured in The Honest Ulsterman, Poetry Jukebox, The Waxed Lemon, Skylight 47, the Irish Times, Abridged, BBC Radio and more. She won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing (2022) and was highly commended for the Patrick Kavanagh Award (2025). Jen finished her first poetry collection thanks to a nine-month mentorship at Faber Academy funded by the ACNI. All she needs now is for someone to publish it.

Sinéad Griffin

Sinéad Griffin has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, the Irish Times, The Marrow Poetry, Under The Radar, Hog River Press, and elsewhere. Her work featured in the Poetry Jukebox at IMMA. A Freedom to Write ’24, Agility Award ’23 awardee, she’s co-editor for poetry at The Four Faced Liar.

Cathy Carson

Cathy Carson is a spoken word artist who combines theatre and storytelling to explore human connection and condition. She has been published in anthologies and her one-woman show Becoming Marvellous won the Saboteur award in 2022 and has been published by Flight of the dragonfly press.

Adeline Henry

Adeline Henry has an MA in Creative Writing (QUB) and a PhD in Creative Writing (UU). She has been published in the Irish Times, The Honest Ulsterman, Fortnight Magazine and various anthologies. Her writing comes out of her rural female experience. Her first novel is due for publication in 2026.

Speakers: Fiona O’Rourke, writer and facilitator; Anne-Marie Kelly, Director, Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, Dublin City Libraries; Patsy Horton, Arts & Cultural Programmer, The Linen Hall.

This is an exciting new initiative aimed at bringing together both established and emerging writers from across the island of Ireland to share their experiences and develop their artistic practice. As its title suggests, this initiative seeks to celebrate and amplify the varied and diverse voices from across this island. Each workshop will feature a guest writer from the island of Ireland who will share their work and talk about their own creative process. Island of Many Voices will culminate in an in-person showcase event at The Linen Hall.

Within a supportive writing community of twenty writers, participants will have the opportunity to develop their craft, aided by expert advice and insights from facilitator Fiona O’Rourke and a range of fantastic guest writers including:

Abby Oliveira (Short Story and spoken word)

Scott McKendry (Poetry)

Cathy Sweeney (Flash Fiction and novel)

Lisa McInerney (Novel and editorial work)

Nuala O’Connor (Historical Fiction and poetry)

Anthony J. Quinn (Memoir and crime fiction)

The workshops will explore a variety of genres, including memoir, crime writing, flash fiction, novel, historical fiction, poetry, spoken word and short story. Guest readings, lively Q&A discussions, and facilitated writing exercises will feature in all workshops.

Special Guest Author and Showcase Event

We are delighted to announce our special guest author Wendy Erskine for our public showcase event, which will take place at 1pm, Friday 20 March 2026. This event will feature new work from the writers who have been part of An Island of Many Voices. To welcome Dublin UNESCO City of Literature to The Linen Hall and to Belfast UNESCO City of Music, the event will include a performance by a guest musician.

Wendy Erskine

Wendy Erskine is the author of two prize-winning short story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move. She edited the anthology well I just kind of like it about art in the home. She is a frequent broadcaster and interviewer, and works as a secondary school teacher in Belfast. Her debut novel, The Benefactors, was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, and shortlisted for best novel at the Irish Book Awards, and best audio novel at the British Audio Awards. It was awarded Waterstones Best Irish Book of 2025.

Anthony J. Quinn’s ten novels have received critical acclaim from the Sunday Times, Guardian, Independent, Financial Times, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Express, Der Spiegel, Sydney Morning Herald, Sunday Herald, Irish Times and Irish Independent.

His debut novel Disappeared (Head of Zeus, 2014) was a Daily Mail crime novel of the year and a Sunday Times best novel of the year. It was also shortlisted by the book critics of the Washington Post, LA Times, and San Francisco Chronicle for a Strand Literary Award in the US and longlisted for the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year in the UK. His crime novels have been chosen by the Irish Times and the Irish Independent as one of their best crime novels of the year in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2022.

He has written about crime fiction academically and critically in numerous news articles and has spoken extensively on this subject at events and festivals in Britain, Ireland and Europe. He has lectured in creative writing at Queen’s University Belfast and has held writer-in-residence posts at Libraries Northern Ireland and in County Cavan. He also teaches creative writing and mentors at the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin, and the Prison Arts Foundation.

Cathy Sweeney is a writer from Dublin, Ireland. She has published short fiction and essays in various magazines and journals. In 2020, her collection of short stories, Modern Times, was published by The Stinging Fly Press in Dublin and W&N in the UK and subsequently translated into Italian. Her debut novel, Breakdown, was published by W&N in January 2024 and translated into Dutch and German.

She is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and is represented by Matthew Turner at Rogers, Coleridge & White Agency.

Nuala O’Connor lives in Galway, Ireland. She is a fiction writer and poet. Her fifth poetry collection Menagerie (Arlen House) was published in 2025. She is currently writing a memoir about late-diagnosed autism. She is a member of Aosdána.

Abby Oliveira is a writer, performer, lyricist, and theatre maker based in Derry in the north of Ireland. For the past few years, she has been working mainly collaboratively in her capacity as a spoken-word poet; working with musicians, photographers, street theatre companies, acrobats, actors and more. She has performed regularly at events and festivals throughout the UK, Ireland and abroad, and has had work commissioned by BBC Radio 4, Foyle, RTÉ radio, and more. She is currently completing an MA in creative writing at Queen’s University, Belfast.

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 twelve languages, is editor of The Stinging Fly magazine, and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Galway.

Scott McKendry is from north Belfast. His poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere. His pamphlet, Curfuffle (Lifeboat, 2019), was a Poetry Book Society Autumn Choice. In 2019, McKendry won a Patrick Kavanagh Award. In 2024 he was chosen by Paul Muldoon as Ireland Chair of Poetry’s Poet of Promise. His debut collection, GUB, is out now with Corsair (Little, Brown).

Fiona O’Rourke’s short stories, autofiction, and essays have been published in journals, anthologies, and broadcast on radio. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023 and her debut novel was selected for the Irish Novel Fair. Since earning an MPhil in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin, she has facilitated creative writing courses in community, libraries, and festivals. She was the programmer and facilitator for Creative Responses to The Political Collection at The Linen Hall (Belfast), and Northern Soul Roadshow for the Irish Writers Centre supported by the Arts Council Northern Ireland.

ABOUT THE PARTNERS

Dublin UNESCO City of Literature

Dublin was designated a UNESCO city of literature 15 years ago when it became 4th UNESCO city of literature in the world. The designation is managed by Dublin City Libraries, a service of Dublin City Council. The work of the UNESCO City of literature team supports, promotes and develops Dublin as a UNESCO city of literature, reflecting a capital city with a strong sense of its literary past and its contemporary literary scene. It also engages with Ireland’s creative community to continually strengthen its literary profile. In addition, it ensures Dublin participates as an active member on the UNESCO Creative Cities’ Network platform. In 2025, the office co-ordinated the 30th anniversary of the Dublin Literary Award and 20th anniversary of The One Dublin One Book programme.

The Linen Hall

The Belfast Library and Society for Promoting Knowledge – the official title of the institution more commonly known as The Linen Hall Library – developed from the Belfast Reading Society which was founded on 13 May 1788. The Linen Hall is a unique institution. It is the oldest library in the city and remains the only subscription library in Ireland. Founding members established the society on radical and Enlightenment ideals. Over more than two hundred years, The Linen Hall has retained its independence, maintaining the principle that its resources are owned by the community for the community. The library holds the Northern Ireland Literary archive, containing archives from a host of writers, including Joan Lingard, Louis MacNeice, and Stewart Parker. It also holds the literary archives of contemporary writers such as David Park, Moyra Donaldson, Rosemary Jenkinson, Bernie McGill and Brian McGilloway.

Ar ais go Nuacht agus Deiseanna