Each year, the Seamus Heaney Centre announces three Fellows from the worlds of Poetry, Fiction, Music, Film and Television to explore creative writing in all its forms by working with students, and contributing to the Centre’s activities within the University and the wider literary community. The appointments are supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI).

Iain Archer is a Grammy nominated musician from Bangor, who has written and produced for artists such as Snow Patrol, Jake Bugg, Liam Gallagher and James Bay. He has received two Ivor Novello Awards and a third nomination. As well as his critically acclaimed solo career, Iain is a member of the band Tired Pony.

Lucy Caldwell is a Belfast-born author of three novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and a collection of short stories. She is the editor of the forthcoming anthology Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber, 2019). She has won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Irish Writers’ and Screenwriters’ Guild Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Award (Canada & Europe),and a Major Individual Artist Award from the ACNI.

Lisa McGee is a stage and screen writer. Born in Derry-Londonderry, she studied Drama at Queen's University Belfast. She was writer on attachment with the Royal National Theatre in London in 2006. Her plays include The Heights, Nineteen Ninety Two, and Girls and Dolls, for which she won the Stewart Parker Trust New Playwright Bursary 2007, and Jump, which has been adapted into a film. Lisa is the acclaimed writer and creator behind the hit Channel 4 sitcom’s London Irish and Derry Girls. She is currently working on writing the second series of Derry Girls.

Welcoming the new appointments, Professor Glenn Patterson, Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s, said: “We are delighted to this year welcome Iain, Lucy and Lisa to the Seamus Heaney Centre family. Each writer demonstrates excellence in their field, as well as an openness to learn from their engagement with students. It is hoped that their time at the Centre will inform their future practice.

“The Fellowships represent a commitment by the Centre to the encouragement and celebration of writing in all its forms and continues the legacy of Seamus Heaney’s work.”

Last year’s inaugural Seamus Heaney Centre Fellows were the novelist Jo Baker, poet Doireann Ni Ghriofa, and musician Peter Wilson, who performs as Duke Special.

The new Fellows will officially take up their posts in the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s in the new year.

ENDS…

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