Laura Cassidy is publisher and co-editor at the literary journal and small press Banshee, where along with her co-founders she was named a Bookseller Rising Star. Her novels for young adults were published by Penguin Ireland, and she is a recipient of the Cecil Day Lewis Literary Bursary Award and an Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursary Award. From Co. Kildare, she now lives in Cork city.| Listen & Be Heard Network
Mahreen Sohail was born in Pakistan. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied as a Fulbright scholar; and was a Writing Fellow at A Public Space and a Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Her work has appeared in Granta, the Kenyon Review, the Pushcart Prize Anthology (XLII), and elsewhere. She lives in Washington DC.| Listen & Be Heard Network
Laura Jean McKay is the author of The Animals in That Country – winner of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Victorian Prize for Literature, the ABIA Small Publishers Adult Book of the Year and co-winner of the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2021. Laura is also the author of Holiday in Cambodia and her latest collection is Gunflower. She is the 2025 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow and teaches Creative Writing at Massey University.| Listen & Be Heard Network
Mary O’Donnell has written award-winning poetry, novels, short fiction collections and dynamic essays. Published fiction includes the novels The Elysium Testament and Where They Lie. In 2023 she received an An Post/Irish Book Award for her political poem ‘Vectors in Kabul’. In 2026 Wake Forest University Press (USA) will publish her ninth poetry collection, Tenderness. In May this year, a new short fiction collection, Walking Ghosts was published by Mercier Press, and her transla...| Listen & Be Heard Network
Patrick Cotter is an Irish poet, born in Cork City where he still lives and works as a literary festival organiser and editor. His poems have been published in journals such as the Financial Times, The London Review of Books, Poetry and Poetry Review. He is a recipient of the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry. His poems have been translated into over a dozen languages and he has given readings of his work across the Northern Hemisphere. Sonic White Poise is his third full-length collection.| Listen & Be Heard Network
In this masterful collection, Mary O'Donnell explores the subtle fractures and quiet transformations that shape modern life. Her characters navigate a society in flux, where traditional certainties give way to new complexities.| Listen & Be Heard Network
A family of cat farmers gets the chance to set the felines free. A group of chickens tells it like it is. A female-crewed ship ploughs through the patriarchy. A support group finds solace in a world without men. With her trademark humour, energy, and flair, McKay offers glimpses of places where dreams subsume reality, where childhood restarts, where humans embrace their animal selves and animals talk like humans.| Listen & Be Heard Network
In twelve kaleidoscopic stories, Mahreen Sohail shifts our perspective on this question from moment to moment. Two girls observe a group of child soldiers and one reflects: “My sister and I were only small scale sinners.” A chorus of sixth graders unravels a school year they spend obsessed with their twin classmates. A girl cuts off her beautiful long hair for her boyfriend’s dying mother, but he immediately wishes she hadn’t. Alternate, parallel lives are considered. With startling o...| Listen & Be Heard Network