Alan Yentob is a British television executive and presenter who was, until recently, Creative Director of the BBC. Having distinguished himself as an outstanding programme maker at a young age, he went on to hold most of the senior leadership roles at the BBC. In the past decade he was both Creative Director, and Editor and Presenter of the arts … Read More

Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951. He now lives in New York. A former radio and television producer for the BBC in Belfast, he has taught at Princeton University for thirty-five years. He is the author of fourteen collections of poetry including Howdie-Skelp, published by FSG and Faber and Faber in 2021. Among his awards are the … Read More

Olivia O’Leary is a journalist and broadcaster.  She has presented current affairs programmes for RTE, BBC and ITV. In recent years she presented RTE Radio One’s ‘The Poetry Programme’.  The O’Brien Press  has published two collections of her radio columns for RTE’s Drivetime-‘Politicians and Other Animals’ , and ‘Party Animals’.  She has won three Jacob’s awards for her work with … Read More

Mark O’Connell is the author of To Be a Machine, which was awarded the 2019 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Slate, and The Guardian. He lives in Dublin with his family.”

Sinéad Gleeson’s essay collection Constellations: Reflections from Life won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at 2019 Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. It was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She is the editor of The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers, The Glass Shore: … Read More

Sarah Waters, OBE was born in Wales in 1966. She has written six novels: Tipping the Velvet (1998), which won the Betty Trask Award; Affinity (1999), which won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday / John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; Fingersmith (2002), which was short-listed for … Read More

Mary Robinson is Adjunct Professor for Climate Justice in Trinity College Dublin and Chair of The Elders. She served as President of Ireland from 1990-1997 and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997-2002. She is a member of the Club of Madrid and the recipient of numerous honours and awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the President … Read More

Max Porter is the author of  Grief is the Thing with Feathers  which won the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Books Are My Bag Reader ‘s Award and the  Sunday  Times PFD Young Writer of the Year Award. It was adapted into a play by Enda Walsh for Complicite. His second novel Lanny was published in 2019 and longlisted for … Read More

Kirsty Lang is a writer, broadcaster and former foreign correspondent. A familiar voice on BBC Radio 4 Kirsty is a presenter on the arts show Front Row and this year took over as the first female host of the fiendishly difficult Round Britain Quiz, the longest running game show in Europe. She is also Chair of the Baltic Centre for … Read More

Alex Clark is a journalist and broadcaster, often seen in the pages of the Guardian, the Observer and the Times Literary Supplement, and heard on BBC R4 programmes such as Front Row and Open Book. An experienced chair of live events, she has also worked as an artistic director at the Bath Festival and is now a Patron of the Cambridge … Read More