Who We Are

Breda Brown

Appointed May 2021, elected Chairperson August 2021

Breda Brown is Co founder and Communications Director of Unique Media, a consultancy which provides strategic cross platform communications solutions to clients across a range of sectors. Services include PR, Public Affairs, Media Training, Podcast & Video Production, Digital & Social Media and Event Management. Breda’s work extends to clients such as the An Post Irish Book Awards, where, over the past 15 years, her strategic planning, PR, digital and event management expertise has helped turn the initiative into one of the most significant events in the Irish literary calendar. An absolute book lover, Breda reviews crime novels for the Sunday Independent and also presents the Inside Books podcast. In each episode, she chats to people associated with the world of books – including well-known authors, publishers, editors, agents, critics, booksellers and more. Breda holds an MA in Journalism and BA in Communication Studies, both from Dublin City University.

Susanne Dirks

Appointed April 2019, elected Vice Chairperson April 2021

Susanne Dirks, a native German, is an international business and Internet consultant and translator/interpreter with extensive experience and qualifications in translation/localisation, IT/web technologies, and internet marketing. In 2013, after 20 years of working as a consultant and manager for technology MNCs, providing consultancy to companies across Europe, Susanne set up her own business, GLOCAFY, helping export-focused companies develop and implement a business-driven strategy for international web presence, including website localisation, website translation and  trans-creation, international SEO, and e-marketing for export markets. Susanne is a qualified translator (Staatlich geprüfte Übersetzerin, Erlangen, 1989) and also holds an MSc in Knowledge-Based Systems (Edinburgh University, 1993) and a First Class BSc (Hons) (Middlesex University, London, 1992) in Information Technology. Susanne, who has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Irish Translators’ and Interpreters’ Association (ITIA) since 2014, including roles as Secretary and chair of the Sub-Committee for Marketing/Website, is currently the ITIA nominee for the IWC Board.

Liz Morrin

Appointed April 2024, elected Treasurer 2024

Former Deputy Director of Field Operations Financing Division and Chief of the Global and Regional Financing Service in the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Liz also served with the UN in Lebanon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kosovo and North Macedonia during a career spanning twenty-eight years. She is a member of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Ireland and the International Press Institute. Liz has a strong interest in the arts and literature and is a keen theatregoer. She studied storytelling with the Irish Arts Center (NY) and improv/acting with the UCB (NY).

Lissa Oliver

Appointed December 2019, elected Secretary June 2020

Lissa is an award-winning journalist specialising in the field of welfare for the horseracing industry, for both equine and participant health and well-being, her works published by the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders Association and Irish Racehorse Trainers Association, among others. She is also a novelist, her first published novel, Nero – The Last Caesar, based on first century factual biographies of the Roman emperor Nero. She has three horseracing-themed thrillers published by Maverick House, Chantilly Dawns, a No.1 Bestseller on Amazon in March 2019, Sainte Bastien and the Silver Dagger nominee Gala Day. As well as being current Chair of the Irish Writers Union, she is on the Board of the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency and is an ETB tutor in creative writing and transformative community education. Lissa is an Irish Writers’ Union nominee to the Irish Writers Centre Board.

Dermot Davis

Appointed April 2019

Dermot is an award-winning author, screenwriter and playwright. His creative output encompasses varied genres and styles with a special focus on human themes and characters transformed by life experience. His published work includes the satirical novel, Brain: The Man Who Wrote the Book That Changed the World which received a Gold Medal in the Reader’s Favorite International Book Award, and was first place winner in the Somerset Awards and the USA Best Book Awards. A recipient of the O.Z Whitehead Playwriting Award, his plays have been produced at Theatre Banshee, Burbank, the Celtic Arts Center, Hollywood and Playwright’s Platform, Boston. As a founding member of Laughing Gravy Theatre he toured the east coast of the US. Laughing Gravy were subsequently invited as a resident theatre group at the prestigious Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Charleston, SC. Dermot is an Irish Writers Centre Members’ nominee to the IWC Board.

Áine Denn

Appointed April 2021

Áine Denn is an entrepreneurial leader and advisor with a technology background. A people person, she has extensive C-Level experience in enterprise software, business development, operations, and customer success in senior executive positions in public and private companies. Áine now guides business leaders to execute their strategy and unlock the value in their businesses. She provides coaching and accountability around leadership, strategy, revenue and operations. Previously Áine co-founded Altify (now Upland Altify), the global sales methodology software company. Áine volunteers as a lead entrepreneur for the programmes, Going for Growth and Back for Business, which mentor growth-oriented SMEs and entrepreneurs, specifically female business owners and returning Irish emigrants. Áine is an avid reader and an enthusiastic Leinster and Ireland rugby supporter.

Tadhg Dorgan

Appointed April 2022

Tadhg Dorgan is a practising barrister, based at the Four Courts Dublin, a native of Mallow Co. Cork, he holds qualifications in law from University College Cork, The Honourable Society of the Kings Inns and Harvard University.  After being Called to the Bar he took up practice at the Law Library, where he practices in the area of civil litigation. He has also been called to the Bar of of Northern Ireland, and the Bar of England & Wales (Middle Temple). A co-author of the legal text  Damages published by Roundhall which is in its second edition. He is a  member of the Council of Kings Inns, Education Committee and Appeals Board.

Emma Gorman

Appointed December 2019

Emma is Publicity and Brand Partnerships Manager at Tourism Ireland, with responsibility for a wide range of areas, including Publicity strategy across all Tourism Ireland’s international markets, influencer marketing, screen tourism, promotion of festivals, as well as cross-market brand partnerships. She has over 20 years experience in the Tourism Industry, marketing Ireland as a holiday destination overseas. She spent 7 years working for Bord Failte and later Tourism Ireland in Germany in PR and consumer marketing roles, before returning to Dublin to take up a PR role at Tourism Ireland and acting as the lead liaison with Failte Ireland, the Northern Irish Tourist Board and the tourism industry on publicity programmes. She later moved into the digital space, developing and managing Tourism Ireland’s digital and social strategy, search engine marketing, paid content seeding and digital campaigns. Emma has a keen interest in the arts & literature, and has worked with many of Ireland’s arts festivals & associations in her Tourism Ireland roles. For Emma, storytelling is core to the Irish sense of identity & indeed how we are perceived by others. She graduated from Trinity, with a BA in French and German. She later did an MBA with the Open University and a Diploma in Digital Marketing with the Digital Marketing Institute.

Jess Majekodunmi

Appointed April 2021

Jess Majekodunmi is a design historian and an innovation designer, and okay with contradictions. She credits her undergraduate degree in English Literature with a life-long appreciation for writers and writing. Punctuated by unexpected and surprising opportunities, Jess’ career has zig zagged across continents, roles, organizations and sectors, for-profit and for non-profits. Now as the Director of the Human Insights Lab at The Dock, Accenture‘s flagship global R&D centre, she spends her working hours asking ‘why?’, ‘how?’ and ‘so what?’ about people, society and technology. Jess is also a co-founding member of Beyond Representation, an organisation championing women of colour who are breaking new ground in Irish media, arts & business.

Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan

Appointed April 2021

Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan (She/Her) is a Dublin-based arts manager, writer, and performer from India. Her work has been published in Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets from Dedalus Press, The Ireland Chair of Poetry Hold Open the Dooranthology by UCD Press, the Green Carnations: 25 Young LGBTQ+ Poets from Ireland anthology by Book Hub Publishing, Banshee, Honest Ulsterman, Impossible Archetype, and Poetry Ireland Review. In 2020 Chandrika won 3rd place in the Fingal Poetry Prize. Chandrika is editor of Poetry Ireland’s Trumpet issue 9, and book reviewer for Children’s Books Ireland’s Inis magazine. By day she is Marketing and Development Manager for Fishamble: The New Play Company. 

Twitter: @Chandrikanm
Instagram: @chandrikanm.art 

Tristan Rosenstock

Appointed April 2022

Tristan Rosenstock works with RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta as a broadcaster and producer. He has presented documentaries on Newstalk which have celebrated the works of writers Brendan Behan and Caitlín Maude. He presented 8 seasons of TG4’s flagship arts series Imeall. Since 2017 he has been  literary editor of the monthly magazine Comhar. Tristan is co-editor along with Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh of a collection of essays which focus on the seminal Irish-language publication Innti, and the book Inside Innti: A new Wave in Irish Poetry will be published by Cork University Press in 2023.

His adaptation of a Liam Ó Flaithearta short story was broadcast on TG4, and he writes scripts for television and radio documentaries.

As a musician with traditional group Téada, he has toured all over the world and released 6 albums on the Gael Linn label.

Michael D. Higgins

Patron of the Irish Writers Centre

We are delighted to announce that President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, has kindly agreed to become the Patron of the Irish Writers Centre. The President visited the Centre on 13 January 2016, marking what was a memorable inaugural event in our 25th anniversary celebration year.  We are also thrilled to welcome six new Ambassadors who will act to promote and endorse the Irish Writers Centre over the next three years. They are all key literary figures in Irish literature selected across a range of disciplines and we look forward to working with them in furthering the aims and ambitions of the Irish Writers Centre both at home and abroad.

John Banville

William John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland. After college John worked as a clerk for Ireland’s national airline, Aer Lingus, before joining The Irish Press as a sub-editor in 1969. Continuing with journalism for over thirty years, John was Literary Editor at The Irish Times from 1988 to 1999. John’s first book, Long Lankin, a collection of short stories and a novella, was published in 1970. His first novel, Nightspawn, came out in 1971. In 2005, John won the Man Booker Prize for The Sea. In 2011 he was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize. In 2013, John was awarded the Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature.

Anne Enright

Anne Enright has published novels, short stories, essays, and one non-fiction book. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize. She has also won the 1991 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the 2001 Encore Award and the 2008 Irish Novel of the Year. Anne Enright is the first Laureate for Irish Fiction, a post she currently holds. Anne’s writing explores themes such as family relationships, love and sex, Ireland’s difficult past and its modern zeitgeist.

Mike McCormack

Mike McCormack is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from Mayo. His previous work includes Getting it in the Head (1996) and Forensic Songs (2012). In 1996 he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for Getting it in the Head and in 2007 he was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. In 2016, Solar Bones won the Goldsmiths Prize and was BGE Irish Book of the Year, and in 2017 was longlisted for the Man Booker prize. In 2018, Solar Bones won the Dublin International Literary Award. Mike holds the Charles A. Heimbold Jr., Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University for the spring 2019 semester.

Marian Keyes

Marian Keyes was born in Limerick in 1963, and brought up in Cavan, Cork, Galway and Dublin; she spent her twenties in London, but is now living in Dún Laoghaire. She published her first novel Watermelon in 1995 and it was an immediate, runaway success. Its chatty conversational style and whimsical Irish humour appealed to all age groups, and this appeal spread to Britain when Watermelon was picked as a Fresh Talent book. Other countries followed (most notably the US in 1997) and Marian is now published in thirty-three languages. Anybody Out There won the British Book Awards award for popular fiction and the inaugural Melissa Nathan prize for Comedy Romance. This Charming Man won the Irish Book award for popular fiction.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne was born in Dublin in 1954 and is a graduate of UCD. Éilís studied at UCD, for almost ten years. She focused on literature and narrative studies, studying Pure English for the BA, doing an M Phil in Middle English and Old Irish, and finishing in 1982 with a Ph D in Folklore. From 1978-9 she studied at the Folklore Institute in the University of Copenhagen as a research scholar, while researching her doctoral thesis.

Her first book was published in 1988, Blood and Water, and since then she has written about 24 books, including novels, collections of short stories, several books for children, plays and non-fiction works. She writes in both Irish and English. She was elected to Aosdána, the Irish Association of Artists, in 2004.

Joseph O’Connor

Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin. He is the author of eight novels: Cowboys and Indians (short-listed for the Whitbread Prize), Desperadoes, The Salesman, Inishowen, Star of the Sea, Redemption Falls, Ghost Light and The Thrill of it All, as well as two collections of short stories, True Believers and Where Have You Been? In 2009 he was the Harman Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Baruch College, City University of New York. In December 2011, he received an honorary Doctorate in Literature from University College Dublin. He received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature in 2012. His latest novel is The Thrill of it All, published in May 2014 by Harvill Secker.In 2014 he was appointed Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.

Ciara Ní É

Ciara Ní É is the founder of REIC, a monthly bilingual spoken word and open mic night that features poetry, music, storytelling and rap. She has performed her work in Ireland and internationally. She has been published in a variety of journals including Icarus and Comhar, and in 2018 she released a series of 4 poetry videos in partnership with the Irish Writers Centre.

Ciara’s commissions include UNESCO’s Dublin City of Literature video 2015, and a poem for Seó Beo Pheil na mBan on TG4, which received more than 300,000 views online.