Previous writers in residence

Lisa Harding

2023

Lisa is a writer, actress and playwright. She received an MPhil in creative writing from TCD in 2014. Harvesting, her debut novel, won the Kate O’Brien award, was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and the Kerry Group Prize in 2018. It is being republished in the US in 2023 under the title of Cloud Girls. Her second novel, Bright Burning Things, was published internationally to widespread critical acclaim. It received a starred review in the Publisher’s Weekly, was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, a Dalkey Literary Award, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, a People Magazine Choice, and a read with Jenna Book Club Pick as featured on the Today Show.

Cathy Sweeney

2022

Cathy Sweeney’s short fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review, Egress, Winter Papers, Banshee, The Tangerine, Granta and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her debut collection of short stories, MODERN TIMES, was published by The Stinging Fly Press and W&N in 2020. Her novel BREAKDOWN was published by W&N in 2023.

Eimear Ryan

2021

Eimear Ryan is the author of a novel, Holding Her Breath (2021) and a sports memoir, The Grass Ceiling (2023), both published by Sandycove. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, The Long Gaze Back (New Island) and Town & Country (Faber). She is a co-founder of the literary journal Banshee and its publishing imprint, Banshee Press. She is a sports columnist with the Irish Examiner and has written about women in sport for Literary Hub, The 42, Image, Stranger’s Guide, Winter Papers and elsewhere. She lives in Cork city.

Danny Denton

2020

Danny Denton (he/him) is a writer from Cork, Ireland. His first novel, The Earlie King & The Kid In Yellow (Granta Books, 2018) was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and The Collyer-Bristow Prize. All Along The Echo, his second novel, was published by Atlantic Books in 2022. Among other publications, his work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Granta, Winter Papers, The Dublin Review, Tate Etc, The Guardian, The Irish Times, Architecture Ireland and The Big Issue, and has also been broadcast on BBC and RTE radios. He was the editor of The Stinging Fly magazine from 2018 to 2022, and lectures on Creative Writing at University College Cork. danny.denton@ucc.ie 

Danielle McLaughlin

2019

Danielle McLaughlin’s short story collection Dinosaurs on Other Planets was published in 2015 by The Stinging Fly Press. In 2019, she was a Windham-Campbell Prize recipient, and won the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. Her first novel, The Art of Falling, was published in 2021 by John Murray and was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2022.

Thomas Morris

2018

Thomas Morris’s debut story collection We Don’t Know What We’re Doing won the Wales Book of the Year Award, the Rhys Davies Trust Fiction Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. His stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published and anthologised in Zoetrope, Best European Fiction 2018 and The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story. He lives in Dublin, where he is Editor-at-Large at the Stinging Fly.

Conall Creedon

2017

Cónal Creedon is a novelist, playwright and documentary film maker. He was appointed Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing at University College Cork. Cónal’s recently published collection of award-winning short fictions Pancho and Lefty Ride Again (2021) has been awarded Cork’s One City One Book Award 2022.

Michael West

2015-2016

Michael West's work for the Corn Exchange includes A Play on Two Chairs, Car Show, Dublin By Lamplight, Everyday, Man of Valour and an adaptation of James Joyce's Dubliners. In collaboration with Team theatre he has written two plays for children: Forest Man and Jack Fell Down. Other work includes versions of The Marriage of Figaro (Abbey), Tartuffe (Gate), Moliere's Don Juan and The Tender Trap (an adaptation of La Double Inconstance by Marivaux), both for Pigsback. He has also translated or adapted work by Arrabel, de Musset, Bely and Brecht. Other plays include Monkey, Sardines, Snow, The Quirk Estate, and a piece for radio, The Death of Naturalism. His play Conservatory was produced by the Abbey Theatre at the Peacock in 2014.

Leanne O'Sullivan

2013-2015

Leanne O'Sullivan was born in 1983, and comes from the Beara peninsula in West Cork. She received an MA in English in 2006 from University College, Cork, where she now teaches. The winner of several of Ireland's poetry competitions in her early 20s (including the Seacat, Davoren Hanna and RTE Rattlebag Poetry Slam), she has published four collections, all from Bloodaxe, Waiting for My Clothes (2004), Cailleach: The Hag of Beara (2009), winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2010, The Mining Road (2013) and A Quarter of an Hour (2018), winner of the inaugural Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2019.  A Quarter of an Hour was also shortlisted for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award 2019 and the Pigott Poetry Prize 2019. She was given the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Award in 2009 and the Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry in 2011, and received a UCC Alumni Award in 2012. Her work has been included in various anthologies, including Selina Guinness's The New Irish Poets (Bloodaxe Books, 2004) and Billy Collins's Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry (Random House, 2003). Residencies and festival readings have taken her to France, India, China and America.

Matthew Sweeney

2012-2013

Matthew Sweeney (1952-2018) was a major Irish poet. Born in Donegal he moved to London to study after he finished secondary school. London was where he developed and worked as a poet, with spells in Berlin before he settled in Cork in 2008. He published seventeen collections of poetry, notably The Bridal Suite (Cape), Black Moon (Cape) and Horse Music (Bloodaxe). He was shorlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, was a recipient of a Cholmondeley Award and a winner of the Piggot Prize. He was a member of Aosdana. He died in August 2018 of motor neuron disease. One of his final poems 'The Owl' is an astonishing meditation on mortality and is considered one of his masterpieces.