Rita Ann Higgins
Rita Ann Higgins is one of the most popular poets now writing in Ireland. Born in 1955 in Galway, where she still lives there, she made her debut in 1986, and since then, in addition to writing four stage plays, she has published a further four new collections of poems, as well as a new and selected volume, Sunny Side Plucked (1996), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and, last year, a second retrospective volume, Throw in the Vowels (Bloodaxe). Rita Ann Higgins is a member of Aosdana.

"A brilliantly spiky, surreal blend of humour and social issues. Her poems are a witty mix of the erotic and the upfront political from a female perspective, with wonderful rhythms that effortlessly incorporate direct speech" - Ruth Padel, Independent on Sunday

Declan Lynch
One of Ireland’s best-known journalists and non-fiction writers, Declan Lynch is a columnist with the Sunday Independent and a long-time contributor to Hot Press for which he has written since the age of 17. As a novelist he has published three widely-acclaimed novels, All The People All The Time (2002), which has been adapted for the screen by Barry Devlin and will be directed by Gerard Stembridge, Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me (2003) and, earlier this year, The Rooms (Hot Press Books, 2006), which has already received widespread critical acclaim and has been called “the best writing on alcoholism since Bill Wilson wrote the Big Book” (John Waters).

"A tough-minded, richly enjoyable and unflinchingly truthful book" - Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times