The Judges

PROF. CHRIS MORASH (Non-Voting Chair), originally from Nova Scotia, is the Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing in Trinity College Dublin, where he served as Vice-Provost of the university from 2016-19. He has published widely on Irish literature, theatre and culture. He was elected to Membership of the Royal Irish Academy in 2007, and to Fellowship of Trinity in 2016. His most recent book, published in 2021, is Yeats on Theatre, from Cambridge University Press.  He has curated the Unseen Plays series for the Abbey Theatre. The 2022 DUBLIN Literary Award will be his third year chairing the award’s Judging Panel.

SINÉAD MORIARTY was born and raised in Dublin. After living in Paris and London for many years, she has returned to Dublin. Sinéad is the bestselling author of 15 novels published by Penguin Random House. Her books have been translated into 25 languages. Her first children’s book, The New Girl, has just been published by Gill publishing.  Sinéad has been a columnist with the Irish Independent for 7 years and is also the books ambassador for Eason’s Must Reads book club. She sat on the board of the Arts Council and is a passionate advocate for fellow writers and the books industry in Ireland.

ALVIN PANG, PhD is a poet, writer, editor, anthologist, translator and researcher whose broad creative practice spans over two decades of literary activity in his native Singapore and elsewhere. Featured in The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English, his writing has been translated into more than twenty languages worldwide, including Swedish, Macedonian, Croatian, Chinese and French. For contributions to literature, he has received Singapore’s Young Artist of the Year Award, the Singapore Youth Award and the JCCI Education Award. In 2021, he was appointed to the honorary position of Adjunct Professor of RMIT University. His books include the bestselling What Gives Us Our Names (2011), When the Barbarians Arrive (2012), What Happened: Poems 1997-2017 (2017) and Uninterrupted time (2019).

CLÍONA NÍ RÍORDÁIN was born in Cork. She moved to France to pursue post-graduate studies and now lives in Paris where she is Professor of English at the Sorbonne Nouvelle. She teaches translation studies and Irish literature. Her most recent book, English Language Poets in University College Cork 1970-1980, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020. She translated Michel Déon’s memoir Horseman Pass By (Lilliput, 2017). She has also edited three anthologies of Irish poetry, the most recent, Jeune Poésie d’Irlande: les poètes du Munster (Illador, 2015), was co-edited and co-translated with Paul Bensimon. The duo will publish a volume of Gerry Murphy’s poems, Plus loin encore, with Circe in March 2022. She chairs the Fondation irlandaise’s Translation Prize and sits on the Strategic Committee of the Centre Culturel Irlandais.

EMMANUEL DANDAURA is the Executive Director of the Institute of Strategic and Development Communication at the Nasarawa State University, Keffi, Nigeria. He is a creative writer, literary critic, festival curator, scholar, and multiple award winning playwright based in Abuja, Nigeria where he was born over fifty years ago. Dandaura has in the last three decades provided valuable contributions to the development of African literature and popularised Africa’s diverse cultural expressions through his creative works, scholarly publications, public lectures and researches. He is a member of the Pan African Writers Association and has served as jury to many literary competitions and theatre festivals in Africa, Asia and Europe. Dandaura has over the years provided strategic interventions and consultancy services in his discipline to the African Union, UNESCO, European Union, UNICEF, World Bank, Robert Bostch Stiftung and British Council.

VICTORIA WHITE is a native Dubliner and a graduate, with an M. Litt in English Literature, of Trinity College, Dublin.  Following a period teaching English at the University of Pavia, Italy and elsewhere, she has worked in Dublin as a writer and journalist, working first as a theatre critic and guest editor of Theatre Ireland magazine and as a features writer and subsequently as Arts Editor of The Irish Times. She has published short stories, a polemic on motherhood in Ireland (Mother Ireland, 2010) and worked most recently as an opinion columnist for the Irish Examiner and The Herald which garnered her a nomination as Popular Columnist of the Year.