Festival Associates
Activity at The Crescent and Belfast Book Festival is a collaborative endeavour. Each year, we work with a pool of Freelancers who bring their expertise, ideas and range of perspectives to inform and shape the programme. For 2024, we are delighted to be working with Emma Cummins.
Emma Cummins is an Associate for Belfast Book Festival 2025. She is the former manager of the Guardian Bookshop, and previously worked for Guardian Masterclasses as a programmer and copywriter. Emma's essays and reviews have been published in The Quietus, The Guardian, Open Democracy, Flash Art International and Aesthetica. She was shortlisted for the Fish Short Memoir Prize 2021. Emma writes fiction, and has read her work at events with the Seamus Heaney Centre and John Hewitt International Summer School. She is developing a series of short stories, for which she was awarded The Tyrone Guthrie Centre Bursary 2025-6 funded by Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council and the Island Arts Centre. Her fiction explores growing up in Northern Ireland, moving 'over the water' to England, and returning home. Emma is from Hillsborough, Co. Down, and lives in South Belfast
