Agnès Desarthe is the author of nine novels for adults in her native French, many of which have been translated to critical acclaim, most notably Chez Moi, The Foundling, and Five Photos of My Wife, which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Jewish Quarterly Fiction Prize. Her books have been featured in The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, The Telegraph, The Independent, Kirkus Reviews, and many other places. She is also the translator for several authors, including Cynthia Ozick, Jay McInerney, and Virginia Woolf. She lives in France.

Jonathan Buckley was born in Birmingham, grew up in Dudley, and studied English Literature at Sussex University, where he stayed on to take an MA. From there he moved to King’s College, London, where he researched the work of the Scottish poet/artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. After working as a university tutor, stage hand, maker of theatrical sets and props, bookshop manager, decorator and builder, he was commissioned in 1987 to write the Rough Guide to Venice & the Veneto.

He went on to become an editorial director at Rough Guides, and to write further guidebooks on Tuscany & Umbria and Florence, as well as contributing to the Rough Guide to Classical Music and Rough Guide to Opera.

His first novel, The Biography of Thomas Lang, was published by Fourth Estate in 1997. It was followed by Xerxes (1999), Ghost MacIndoe (2001), Invisible (2004), So He Takes The Dog (2006), Contact (2010) and Telescope (2011), Nostalgia (2013) and The River is the River (2015).

From 2003 to 2005 he held a Royal Literary Fund fellowship at the University of Sussex, and from 2007 to 2011 was an Advisory Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund.

He worked as a language editor and editor in two publishing houses, and from 1981 as a freelance writer. For eleven years he devoted himself exclusively to the translation of literary texts, especially novels from German, English and Swedish. In 1984 he was in Weimar as a Goethe fellow to study secondary literature for his translation of Goethe’s Faust. In the spring of 1990 he spent several months on the Fulbright Program at the UCLA in Los Angeles. From autumn 1992, he spent nearly two months in the Czechoslovak foreign service, and from January 1993 two and half years in the Slovak diplomatic service. He served as Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. in Norway, accredited also for Iceland. During his tenure, in 1994 the first Nordic head of state – Iceland’s president Vigdís Finnbogadóttir – visited Slovakia.

From 1995 to 2002, Richter worked in the newly established Slovak Literature Center, where he founded the Department SLOLIA (Slovak Literature Abroad) and the magazine Slovak Literary Review (SLR). In 2000 he founded his own publishing house MilaniuM, specializing in Slovakian poetry, as well as in poetry and prose from Scandinavia and other countries, publishing authors such as H. C. Andersen, Emily Dickinson, R. M. Rilke, Franz Kafka, Edith Södergran, Harry Martinson, Elias Canetti, Milan Rufus, Tomas Tranströmer, Reiner Kunze, Volker Braun, and many more.

At the invitation of the Austrian Society for Literature, in 2004 and 2005 he collected in Vienna material for an anthology of Austrian poetry. In 2006 and 2007, he held a Rilke scholarship in Raron, Switzerland. In 2011 he spent three months in Weimar as a fellow of the Goethe-Gesellschaft.

Nino Ricci’s first novel was the internationally acclaimed Lives of the Saints. It spent 75 weeks on the Globe and Mail‘s bestseller list and was the winner in Canada of the F.G. Bressani Prize, the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, and in England of the Betty Trask Award and Winifred Holtby Prize. In the U.S. it was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a New York Times Notable Book, and in France it was an Oiel de la lettre Selection of the National Libraries Association.

Published in seventeen countries, Lives of the Saints was the first volume of a trilogy that continued with In a Glass House, hailed as a “genuine achievement” by The New York Times, and Where She Has Gone, nominated for the Giller Prize. The Lives of the Saints trilogy was adapted for a television miniseries starring Sophia Loren and Kris Kristofferson.

Books in Canada commented that Ricci’s trilogy “so amply demonstrates the author’s tremendous talents that we would be foolish as readers not to follow him down whatever road he next chooses to follow.” That road led him to Testament, a fictional retelling of the life of Jesus. Hailed as a “masterpiece” by Saturday Night, Testament was a Booklist Choice for the Top Ten Historical Novels of the Year and a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year. It was shortlisted for a Commonwealth Prize and for the Roger’s Writers’ Trust Award for Fiction and was a winner of the Trillium Award.

Testament was followed by the national bestseller The Origin of Species, which earned Ricci the Canadian Authors Association Fiction Award as well as his second Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Set in Montreal in 1980s, the novel casts a Darwinian eye on the life of Alex Fratarcangeli, who is torn between his baser impulses and his pursuit of the Good. “This novel does so well, on so many levels,” wrote the Toronto Star, “that it’s hard to know where to begin tallying up the riches.”

Ricci is also the author of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, a short biography that forms part of Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series, edited by John Ralston Saul. Ricci’s biography, according to HistoryWire, “provides the best, and best written, perspective on Trudeau there is.”

Ricci most recent novel is Sleep, published in the fall of 2015, the harrowing tale of David Pace, an academic whose life unravels after he comes down with a sleep disorder. “A frightening and essential addition to the oeuvre of one of this country’s best and most important writers,” wrote Quill & Quire, hailing the book as “Ricci’s darkest and most thematically daring work to date.” Sleep won Ricci his second Canadian Authors Award for Fiction and was a Toronto Star Top 5 Book for 2015 as well as a Globe and Mail and National Post Best Book. “If endemic narcissism is one of the central pathologies of contemporary culture,” the Toronto Star wrote, “then Ricci has crafted with Sleep one of its holy texts.”

Nino Ricci was born in Leamington, Ontario, to parents from the Molise region of Italy, and completed university studies in Toronto, Montreal, and Florence, Italy. He has served as a writer-in-residence for the Toronto and Kitchener public library systems and for the University of Windsor and the University of Toronto Scarborough, and has held the Mariano Elia Chair at York University, the Chair in Religion and the Arts at Assumption University, the G. M. Hopkins Chair in Literary Studies at John Carroll University, the Killam Visiting Professorship in Canadian Studies at Bridgewater University, and the Pathy Visiting Professorship in Canadian Studies at Princeton. He is also a past president of PEN Canada, a writers’ human rights organization that works for freedom of expression.

Ricci has been a recipient of the Alistair MacLeod Award for Literary Achievement, of York University’s Pinnacle Achievement Award, of the Engel/Findley Award for a Writer in Mid-Career, and of an honorary doctorate from the University of Windsor. He was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 2011 and recently held the inaugural Alice Munro Chair in Creativity at the University of Western Ontario. He lives in Toronto with his wife, writer Erika de Vasconcelos.

Rita Ann Higgins was born in 1955 in Galway, Ireland. She has published 10 collections of poetry, a memoir in 2010 and a book of essays with poems in 2019. She left formal education at 14. As an adult, in NUIG she received a Dilploma sa Gaeilge and a Diploma in Women’s Studies 1994-1996.

Poetry collections from Salmon Poetry include; Goddess on the Mervue Bus(1986), Witch in the Bushes (1988), Goddess and Witch (1990), Philomena’s Revenge (1992) Higher Purchase (1996).  Poetry collections from Bloodaxe include; Sunny Side Plucked (1996), An Awful Racket (2001), Throw in the Vowels: New & Selected Poems in May 2005 (to mark her 50th birthday) Ireland is Changing Mother(2011) and Tongulish (2016).

Memoir & Essays include Hurting God, part essay part rhyme 2010 (Salmon)a memoir in prose and poetry.
Our Killer City, essays and poems from Salmon in 2019. Her plays include; Face Licker Come Home (1991), (published by Salmon) God of the Hatch man (1992), Colie Lally Doesn’t Live in a Bucket (1993) Down All the Roundabouts (1999), The Big Break 2004 (screenplay) The Empty Frame (inspired by Hanna Greally, 2008),
THE PLASTIC BAG (A play for radio 2008). The Colossal Longing of Julie Connors (2012) Screenplays in the Irish Language Straois / The Smirk (2018) Screenplay Í dTeanga Eile/ They Speak in Tongues (2018)

As editor, Out the Clara Road: The Offaly Anthology (1999), Word and Image: a collection of poems from Sunderland Women’s Centre and Washington Bridge Centre in 2000. Co-edited ‘FIZZ’ Poetry of resistance and challenge, an anthology written by young people, in 2004.

Rita Ann Higgins is a recipient of Galway County’s Writer-in-Residence in 1987, Writer in Residence at the National University of Ireland, Galway, in 1994-95, Writer in Residence for Offaly County Council in 1998-99. Green Honors Professor at Texas Christian University, in October 2000. Other awards include a Peadar O’Donnell Award in 1989, several Arts Council bursaries. Sunny Side Plucked’ received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Honorary Fellow at Hong Kong Baptist University Nov 2006. She is a member of AOSDANA

As competition Judge; The IMPAC fiction prize in 2005, The Listowel Novel of the Year prize in (2013)
The Fish Prize (2000), The Listowel Prize for poetry in (2007), The Hotpress ,Write Here, Write Now prize (2018)

Selected anthologies include; Dogs singing, Ed Jessie Lendennie. Salmon Poetry, Everything to Play For: Ed, John Mc Auliffe, Images of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry,Ed By Myra Scneider & Dily’s Wood, Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-critical Sourcebook. Ed by Alexander G Gonzalez, Lucy Collins: Poetry by Women in Ireland a critical Anthology. Fermata-writing inspired by music Ed by Eva Bourke & Vincent Woods.
The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Volume V. Arguments of Heart and mind: Selected essays 1977-2000 Janet Montefiore. The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Ed Patrick Crotty. The Wake forest Book of Irish Women’s Poetry 1976-2000. Dodging Around the Grand Piano, Sex, Politics and Contemporary Irish Women’s Poetry by Ailbhe Smyth. Shine On: Daedalus Press Ed Pat Boran. Don’t Ask me What I mean (poets in their own words) Ed Claire Brown & Don Patterson.

Radio appearances include; Arena (several times), The Brendan O Connor Show, Playback (several times), Lyric FM, BBC Northern Ireland, BBC Manchester. National Television Appearances: The Saturday Night Show 2014, The Late Late Show 2016, The Late Late Show 2017

Prison Workshops: Cork Prison, Limerick Prison, Loughan House Open Prison. Co Cavan, Mountjoy Prison, Mountjoy Women’s Prsion Dochas, Mahgaberry Prison Belfast, Highpoint Prison UK.

Voluntary Community workshop 2013-2015 with Galway Grow Group- promoting positive mental health where they produced a play based loosely on Chekov’s Ward No Six. Written and performed by the group.