John Hewitt International Summer School 2009

WENDY AUSTIN

Wendy Austin is a presenter of Radio Ulster’s flagship current affairs programme, Good Morning Ulster. She began her journalistic career on the East Antrim Times, then the Belfast Telegraph, leaving to join Downtown Radio before moving to the BBC in 1976. She’s presented a range of television programmes from Children In Need to Inside Ulster, Open House to Hillsborough Revisited. On radio her career's included many programmes on BBC Radio Ulster, as well as Woman’s Hour, PM and the Exchange on BBC R4 and other national radio programmes. Her work has taken her to Japan, the USA and to Cambodia with Christian Aid.

DAVID BEGG

David Begg became General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in 2001. For five years prior to that he was Chief Executive of Concern Worldwide, an international humanitarian organisation working in 27 countries and with offices in Dublin, London, Belfast, New York and Chicago. He is also a Director of the Central Bank (since 1995), a Governor of the Irish Times Trust, a non-Executive Director of Aer Lingus, a member of the National Economic and Social Council (NESC), and a member of the ESRI Council. He also sits on the Executive Committee of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

STEVE BRUCE

Born in Edinburgh in 1954, Professor Steve Bruce studied sociology and religious studies at the University of Stirling. He taught at Queen’s University, Belfast, from 1978 to 1991, when he became Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen and, aditionally since 2002, Head of the Schoool of Social Sience. A Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he is the author of 18 books on the sociology of religion, religion and politics, and terrorism, including: The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Right: conservative Protestant politics in America 1978-1988 (Oxford 1988); The Red Hand: loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (Oxford 1992); Choice and Religion: a critique of rational choice theory (Oxford 2000); Fundamentalism (Polity 2001); Politics and Religion (Polity 2003); and Paisley: Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland (Oxford 2007).

BUILLE WITH STRINGS

The group Buille was formed in 2004 by Armagh born brothers, Niall and Caoimhín Vallely, along with Paul Meehan and Brian Morrissey, as a vehicle to perform a body of new music composed by Niall and arranged by the various members of the band. The music was based on traditional forms but freely borrowed stylistic elements from various genres including jazz, blues, Eastern European music and contemporary classical music. Their debut album, Buille, was produced by Donald Shaw and released by Vertical Records in 2005 to rave reviews. The group went on to tour extensively across Ireland, the UK, Europe, USA and Canada and along the way performed at such prestigious festivals as Celtic Connections in Glasgow, St. Chartier Festival in Central France, Festival de Cornouaille in Quimper, Brittany, Beo Festival at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, and the Winnipeg Folk Festival in Canada. The Buille line-up for the JHISS will be Caoimhín Vallely (piano), Niall Vallely (concertina), Paul Meehan (guitar) and Brian Morrissey (bodhran & banjo), and the guest string players will include Donal O'Connor (fiddle), Adrian Hart (violin), Cian O’Duill (viola) and Kate Ellis (cello). For further information on Buille with Strings click here.

LUCY CALDWELL

Award-winning playwright and novelist, Lucy Caldwell, was born in Belfast in 1981. Her debut play, Leaves, won the George Devine Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the BBC Stewart Parker Prize. Her second play, Guardians, will premiere at the 2009 HighTide Festival in Suffolk. Other short plays include The River, winner of the PMA Award for Most Promising Playwright, Toner’s Bog and Carnival, a specially-devised production for a spiegeltent. Her first radio play, Girl From Mars, won the Irish Writers’ Guild Award for Best Play; and her second, Avenues of Eternal Peace, will be broadcast in June 2009. Her first novel, Where They Were Missed (Penguin, 2006), was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Waverton Good Read Award. A novella, The Furthest Distance, is forthcoming with the Irish press, Netherlea. She is currently working on her second novel and on a commission for the Royal Court Theatre, London.

SIOBHAN CAMPBELL

Siobhán Campbell was born in Dublin and spent a number of years in New York and San Francisco, has worked in book publishing as Director of Wolfhound Press and currently directs the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Kingston University, London. Widely published in the USA and UK, she has won awards in the National, Troubadour and Wigtown International competitions. Her collections are Cross-Talk (Seren), The Permanent Wave and The cold that burns, (Blackstaff Press) and chapbooks, That Water Speaks in Tongues (Templar Poetry) and Darwin among the machines (Rack Press). Her work is anthologized widely including in Women’s Work: Modern Women Poets writing in English (Seren), The Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature (NYU Press) and Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets (forthcoming: Bloodaxe). Recent work has appeared in Poetry, Wasafiri, Agenda and Magma. Siobhan has broadcast on BBC and RTE radio and given readings at venues and festivals throughout Ireland and UK, and in Canada and USA.

MARY CONDREN

Born in Dublin, Mary Condren is the author and editor of numerous articles on feminist liberation theology and feminist theory, and The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland (Harper Collins, 1989), where she examined the relationships between women, religion and power. She was educated at the University of Hull, Boston College, and Harvard University where she obtained her doctorate in the area of Religion, Gender and Culture. She currently teaches in the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies at Trinity College Dublin, and is Director of the Institute for Feminism and Religion. Research interests include the relationship between gender, religion and violence; contemporary feminist theology and philosophy; feminist analysis of Celtic mythology. For the past several years she has been working on a feminist critique of the sacrificial social contract, on Brigit as Soulsmith for the new millennium, and on developing a philosophia of mercy.

WILLIAM CRAWLEY

William Crawley is a journalist and broadcaster with the BBC. He presents radio and television programmes on subjects as varied as natural history, religion, ethics, news and current affairs, and the arts, and writes the Will & Testament blog at bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni. He presents Sunday Sequence and The Book Programme each week for BBC Radio Ulster, and his current TV projects include a new series of William Crawley Meets . . ., and a documentary exploring the future of religion in Ireland. He was educated in Belfast and Princeton, New Jersey, earning a PhD in philosophy.

C L DALLAT

C. L. Dallat, poet, musician and critic, was born in Ballycastle, County Antrim, in 1953. He studied statistics and operational research at Queen’s University Belfast, and has since worked in television, publishing and information technology. He now lives in London where he reviews literature and the arts for several publications and has been a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Review since its inception in 1998. His first poetry collection, Morning Star, was published in 1998 and he won the Strokestown International Poetry Competition in 2006. His latest collection is The Year of Not Dancing (Blackstaff Press, 2009).

HELEN DUNMORE

Helen Dunmore is a multi-award-winning novelist, short story writer and poet. She has written nine adult books, including A Spell of Winter, which won the first Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, Zennor in Darkness (1993), winner of the McKitterick Prize, and The Siege (2001), shortlisted for both the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize. Her 22 children’s books include The Tide Knot, winner of the UK Nestlé Children’s Book Prize Silver Medal. Her poetry collections include The Apple Fall (1983), The Sea Skater (1986), which won the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award in 1987, The Raw Garden (1988) and Short Days, Long Nights: New and Selected Poems (1991). Helen Dunmore is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She reviews for The Times and The Observer, contributes to arts programmes on BBC Radio and has been a judge for the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year award.

LEONTIA FLYNN

Leontia Flynn was born in County Down in 1974, and recently completed a Ph.D. at Queen's University, Belfast. In 2001 she won an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection, These Days (Cape, 2004), won the Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection of the Year), and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. In the same year, she was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's 'Next Generation' poets. Her second collection, Drives, (Cape) was published in 2008, when she also received the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, in recognition of her achievement and outstanding promise as a poet, and a major individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Leontia Flynn lives in Belfast and is Research Fellow at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University, Belfast.

JOHN WILSON FOSTER

John Wilson Foster was born in Belfast and educated at Queen's University of Belfast and the University of Oregon. Until 2002 he was Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Since then he has been Leverhulme Visiting Professor to the UK (2004-05), Armstrong Visiting Professor, University of Toronto (2005) and Arts Faculty Visiting Fellow, National University of Ireland, Galway (2006). He is at present a Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Queen's University, Belfast. Among his books are Forces and Themes in Ulster Fiction (1974), Fictions of the Irish Literary Revival (1987), Colonial Consequences (1991), The Achievement of Seamus Heaney (1995) and Irish Novels 1890-1940: New Bearings in Culture and Fiction (2008).

CLAIRE KEEGAN

Claire Keegan was born in Wexford in 1968 and is the author of Antarctica and Walk The Blue Fields. Antarctica was completed in 1998 and announced her as an exceptionally gifted and versatile writer of contemporary fiction. Her second short story collection, Walk the Blue Fields, was published to enormous critical acclaim in 2007 and won her the 2008 Edge Hill Prize for the finest book of Short Stories published in the British Isles. Her stories have won other numerous awards, including The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the William Trevor Prize, The Macaulay Fellowship, The Martin Healy Prize, The Tom Gallon Award, The Olive Cook Award, The Hugh Leonard Bursary and The Francis MacManus Award. She was also a Wingate scholar and Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies at Villanova University, 2007. A member of Aosdána, she lives in rural Ireland.

CLAIRE KILROY

Claire Kilroy was born Dublin in 1973 and studied English in Trinity College. She worked for a number of years in television editing the BBC drama, Ballykissangel, before returning to TCD to complete her Masters degree in Creative Writing. Her first novel, All Summer, which was described in The Times as "compelling ... a thriller, a confession and a love story framed by a meditation on the arts", was published by Faber & Faber in 2003 and won the 2004 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Her second novel, Tenderwire, a love story between a young Irish violinist and an old Italian violin, was published to great acclaim in 2006 and was shortlisted for the 2007 Irish Novel of the Year Award, and the 2007 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Her eagerly awaited third novel, All Names Have Been Changed, was published in May 2009.

YANG LIAN

Yang Lian, one of the foremost Chinese poets of his generation, was one of the original Misty Poets who reacted against the strictures of the Cultural Revolution. Born in Switzerland, the son of a diplomat, he grew up in Beijing and began writing when he was sent to the countryside in the 1970s. His work was criticised in China in 1983 and formally banned in 1989. He has lived in exile since 1989, when he organised memorial services for the dead of Tiananmen Square while in New Zealand. After spells in Australia, Germany and the USA, he settled in London. Translations of his poetry include three collections with Bloodaxe, Where the Sea Stands Still (1999), a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation, Concentric Circles (2005), and Lee Valley Poems (2009), as well as Riding Pisces: Poems from Five Collections (Shearman, 2008), a compilation of earlier work.

IVAN LITTLE

Ivan Little is one of Northern Ireland's best-known and most experienced journalists. He has worked in regional newspapers; the Belfast Telegraph; Downtown Radio; Ulster Television (UTV) and Independent Television News (ITN) in a career which started in 1970. He covered most of the major terrorist atrocities, including the Omagh bombing, the Shankill Road massacre, the Greysteel pub shootings, the Enniskillen poppy day bombing and the loyalist killings at Grahams Bookmakers Shop in Belfast which he was passing at the time. He also established close contacts within paramilitary organisations, both Republican and Loyalists - frequently going into their heartlands to interview terrorist leaders on and off camera. It was also to him that many of the terrorist groups issued their statements claiming responsibility for their horrific killings. Last year, the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern paid a public tribute at a gala dinner in County Donegal to Ivan's reporting of the conflict north and south of the border. He has also travelled extensively and covered the aftermath of 9/11 in New York City and the tsunami in Thailand, as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ivan recently became a freelance writer and broadcaster to enable him to devote more time to his other career as an award-winning actor.

EUGENE MCCABE

Eugene McCabe was born in Glasgow in 1930 but has spent most of his life in Ireland. For decades he farmed with his family near Clones on the Monaghan/Fermanagh border where he still lives. Among his successful stage plays are King of the Castle and Pull Down A Horseman and he has written extensively for television. He has published short fiction including Victims, Heritage and Cancer, all of which have been televised, and a novel, Death and Nightingales (1992). Other fiction includes Tales from the Poorhouse (19990) and his short stories, Heaven Lies About Us(2005). His latest work, a novella, The Love of Sisters, was published by New Island in March 2009. Eugene McCabe received the AWB Vincent American Ireland Literary Fund award in 2006.

WJ (Bill) MCCORMACK

WJ (Bill) McCormack was born near Aughrim in Co Wicklow in 1947. He lived intermittently in Hungary over a period of ten years. He is Keeper of the Edward Worth Library (1733) in Dublin, having previously been Professor of Literary History at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His biographical publications include Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland (1980); Fool of the Family, a Life of JM Synge (2000); From Burke to Beckett; Tradition and Betrayal in Literary History (1994); Fool of the Family, a Life of JM Synge (2000); and Blood Kindred; W. B. Yeats, the Life, the Death, the Politics (2005). Under his poetical pseudonym, Hugh Maxton, he has also written an autobiography, Waking; an Irish Protestant Upbringing (1997). As Hugh Maxton he has published many volumes of poetry and his most recent collection is Poems 2000-2005. He is a member of Aosdána and lives in Co. Monaghan.

BRIAN MCGILLOWAY

Brian McGilloway is author of the critically acclaimed Inspector Benedict Devlin series. He was born in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. After studying English at Queen’s University, Belfast, he took up a teaching position in St Columb’s College in Derry, where he is currently Head of English. His first novel, Borderlands, published by Macmillan New Writing, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger 2007 and was hailed by The Times as ‘one of (2007’s) most impressive debuts.’ 2008 saw the publication of the second novel in the series, Gallows Lane, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Irish Book Awards/Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award. The latest Devlin novel, Bleed a River Deep, was published in April 2009. Brian lives near the Irish borderlands with his wife and their three sons. Before his reading at JHISS 2009, Brian McGilloway will read at Bristol's Crimefest in May and at Theakston's Old Peculiar Crime Festival in July.

GILLIAN MCINTOSH

Dr Gillian McIntosh is a cultural historian, with a particular interest in aspects of ritual, symbolism and commemorative practice, mostly in an Irish context, from the late nineteenth century to the present day. She has been involved in three research projects, supported by the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council, on the history of the book in Ireland, symbolism and identity in Northern Ireland in the twentieth century and, more recently, a project which examined expressions of identity in Belfast between 1820 and the present day. She is current researching and writing on children and public space in Edwardian Ireland. Dr McIntosh's publications include The Force of Culture: Unionist Identities in Twentieth Century Ireland and in 2004 she was commissioned by Belfast City Council to write a history of Belfast City Hall to commemorate its centenary in 2006.

SUSAN MCKAY

Susan McKay is the recently appointed Director of the National Women's Council of Ireland, representing 165 women's groups around the country. She is the author of several critically acclaimed books, the most recent of which, "Bear in Mind These Dead" (Faber 2008), is about the aftermath of the Northern conflict for those bereaved in it. Her books also include "Northern Protestants - An Unsettled People" (Blackstaff, 2000) and "Sophia's Story" (Gill and MacMillan 1998). She has won several awards for her journalism, including the Amnesty International Print Journalism for Ireland in 2001, wrote for the Irish Times and the Irish News, and was a former Northern editor of the Sunday Tribune. She was one of the founders of the Belfast Rape Crisis Centre and worked as a community worker north and south of the border. Susan McKay is a regular contributor to radio and televison.

JOSEPH MCWILLIAMS

Belfast painter, Joseph McWilliams was educated at Belfast College of Art and the Open University and his work has been exhibited in Ireland, Britain, Europe and the USA.; he is represented in numerous collections, including The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Queen’s University, The University of Ulster, The Ulster Museum, CIÉ, The N.I. Civil Service Collection and the AIB Collection. He is a regular lecturer and Broadcaster on the Visual Arts in N. Ireland and has been invited to speak in Boston, USA, at the James Joyce School in Trieste and in Ljubljana Slovenia. He is perhaps best known for his paintings of “The Troubles”, evidenced in exhibitions such as “Art for Society” at the Whitechapel Gallery London, and “Documenta 6” in Kassel, W. Germany. Joe McWilliams and his painter wife, Catherine, are directors of The Cavehill Gallery, Belfast.

DALJIT NAGRA

Daljit Nagra was born and brought up in West London and Sheffield and now lives in London. In 2003, he won the Smith/Doorstop pamphlet competition with Oh my Rub!, under the pseudonym Khan Singh Kumar, the pamphlet going on to become a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice and chosen as one of The Guardian's Poetry Books of the Year. In 2004, his poem Look We Have Coming to Dover! won the Forward Prize (Best Single Poem), and this became the title of his first collection, published in 2007. It went on to win the 2007 Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) and the 2008 Arts Council England Decibel Award. It relates to the experience of British-born Indians, and often employs 'Punglish' - English spoken by Indian Punjabi immigrants. Look We Have Coming to Dover! was shortlisted for several further awards, including the 2007 Costa Poetry Award, and the 2007 Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.

MICHAEL NESBITT

Michael Nesbitt is one of four Northern Ireland Commissioners for Victims and Survivors appointed in June 2008. He has over twenty years experience as a broadcast news journalist, working for BBC Northern Ireland from 1979 to 1989 and UTV from 1992 to 2006. In between, he had a spell as Managing Director of Anderson-Kenny Public Relations. His work includes four years presenting Good Morning Ulster for BBC Radio Ulster, and thirteen years with UTV Live and Insight, specialising in politics and the peace / political process. This entailed reporting news of major incidents, and giving a voice to victims and survivors of atrocities from Enniskillen, through Shankill and Greysteel, to Omagh, as well as recording news of hundreds of individual deaths and injuries. Michael, who is married with two children, has not lost any family member to a Troubles-related incident, but in 1973 the family’s linen business was destroyed in a terrorist attack.

STUART NEVILLE

Stuart Neville has been a musician, a composer, a teacher, a salesman, a film extra, a baker and a hand double for a well known Irish comedian, but he is currently a partner in a successful multimedia design business in Co. Armagh. He has published short stories in Thuglit, Electric Spec, Ulla's Nib and Every Day Fiction. Stuart has signed a two-book deal with Harvill Secker, an imprint of Random House, and his first novel, The Twelve, will be published in the UK on July 2nd 2009. LA Confidential author, James Elroy, widely regarded as one of the world's greatest crime writers, has described The Twelve as ‘One of the best first novels I've read in years.’ It will be published in the USA as The Ghosts of Belfast by Soho Press, New York, and by Random House Kodansha in Japan. There have also been two-book deals with French and Spanish publishers. Stuart is now working on his second novel, a sequel to The Twelve, which will tackle policing and politics in Northern Ireland head-on.

MALACHI O'DOHERTY

Malachi O'Doherty is a Belfast-based writer, broadcaster and one of Northern Ireland's best-known journalists and cultural commentators. He specialises in political commentary and radio reportage, and is a former editor of Fortnight Magazine. He is a regular contributor to BBC Northern Ireland programmes including Talkback, Hearts and Minds and Sunday Sequence. His fourth book, Empty Pulpits: Ireland's Retreat from Religion was published last autumn by Gill and Macmillan. Malachi's other books are: The Trouble With Guns (1998), I Was A Teenage Catholic (2003) and The Telling Year: Belfast 1972 (2007).

DONAL O'KELLY

Donal O’Kelly is an actor and playwright. He was nominated for a Best Actor award for his performance in Jimmy Joyced! in the Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards 2005. His previous solo plays include the award-winning Catalpa and Bat The Father Rabbit The Son. His play The Cambria toured to great success in Ireland and abroad since 2005, and Operation Easter, his play about the 1916 Rising, ran to full houses in Kilmainham Jail to mark its 90th anniversary. In 2007 he toured his Mummer-style 1798 spy thriller Vive La throughout Ireland, and his music-theatre piece Running Beast, about Hugh O’Neill Earl of Tyrone, has toured to rave notices in Ireland and abroad. On screen, he is known for his roles in movies such as the recently-released Kings, The Van, Spin The Bottle, I Went Down, and the RTE television series Paths To Freedom and Fair City.

STEPHEN RILEY

Stephen Riley first arrived in Belfast in 1971, as an experienced reporter from Canada. He joined The Sunday News in Belfast in 1971, writing features and news stories until returning to Canada in 1973. So purely by chance, he witnessed and reported upon the worst single period of the conflict. In the years following, he continued as a journalist in Canada, primarily as a current affairs producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. However, he returned to Belfast with his family (wife and two daughters, all originally from Belfast) every summer, and, as well, worked as a producer with BBC’s Spotlight in 1986-87 during a one-year leave from the CBC. He returned for good to Northern Ireland in 2000, producing again for Spotlight, but moved to UTV’s Insight in 2002, first as senior producer and then as programme editor. He retired in 2008.

THE SANDS FAMILY

With their totally unique blend of self-penned songs and traditional material, The Sands Family have become of one Ireland’s best known folk and traditional bands. The four extremely talented siblings - Anne, Ben, Colum and Tommy Sands - have individually and collectively played a very significant part in the creation of the phenomenal world-wide interest in Irish music since the 1970s. And over thirty years later, the Sands Family are still singing and playing to an ever expanding audience, with fans of all ages - from Berlin to Boston - well aware that a Sands Family concert is substantially more than just an evening of music and song - it is a cultural experience: a chance to enjoy and share in the craic with four superb performers who have the unique ability to make their audiences an integral and important part of every show.

IAN SANSOM

Born in Essex, but now based in Co. Down, Ian Sansom is the celebrated author of the novels, Cortex and Ring Road, and the popular non-fiction work, The Truth About Babies: From A-Z. His recent work, “The Mobile Library” detective series of comic novels is set in Northern Ireland and features a Jewish librarian! Following The Case of The Missing Books, Mr Dixon Disappears and The Delegates’ Choice, Ian’s fourth book in the series, The Bad Book Affair, is to be published in July. He has been a regular contributor to The Guardian, the London Review of Books, The Irish Times, The Spectator and The Dublin Review. He is a founder and editor of the magazine The Enthusiast, whose publications include The Enthusiast Almanack and The Enthusiast Field Guide to Poetry. His essays have appeared in numerous books, magazines and journals, and he is a regular broadcaster on Radio 3 and Radio 4.

MICHAEL SMYTH