Grand Finale: Susannah Dickey, Elaine Feeney, Rita Ann Higgins and Jackie Kay

Rita Ann Higgins was born and lives in Galway. Pathogens Love a Patsy (Pandemic and other Poems) is her 11th book of Poetry. Our Killer City in 2019 (essays and poems) and a memoir Hurting God in 2010 are all from Salmon. In 2020 Rita Ann became the Poet Laureate of The Brendan O’Connor Show on RTE Radio 1. Bloodaxe Books published several of her collections including; Throw in the Vowels (New and selected poems 2005. Ireland is Changing Mother 2011/14. Tongulish in 2016. In 2025 Bloodaxe will bring out her Collected and New poems for her 70th birthday. She has written plays and screenplays. In 2021 she received The Living Poets Society Award. She was shortlisted for The Ireland Professor of Poetry in 2022. She is a member of Aosdana.

Elaine Feeney writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. She has published three poetry collections including The Radio was Gospel and Rise and a new poetry collection All the Good Things You Deserve is forthcoming in 2024 with Penguin Random House. She has published in The Paris Review, The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Poetry Review and The Guardian. Her multi-award-winning debut novel As You Were was published in 2020 and her second novel How to Build a Boat, published in 2023, was longlisted for The Booker Prize.

Susannah Dickey is a writer from Derry. She is the author of two novels: Tennis Lessons (2020) and Common Decency (2022). Her debut poetry collection, ISDAL, was published in 2023 by Picador.

Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh. A poet, novelist and writer of short stories, she has enjoyed great acclaim for her work for both adults and children. Her novel, Trumpet, won the Guardian Fiction Prize. She has published three collections of stories with Picador, Why Don’t You Stop Talking, Wish I Was Here, and Reality, Reality; two poetry collections, Fiere and Bantam; and a memoir, Red Dust Road. From 2016 to 2021 she was the third modern Makar, National Poet for Scotland. She lives in Manchester and is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Salford.