Judges

Kathleen McCracken is the author of eight collections of poetry including Blue Light, Bay and College, shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry, and a bilingual English/Portuguese edition entitled Double Self Portrait with Mirror: New and Selected Poems. She was a finalist for the WB Yeats Society of New York Poetry Competition, the Montreal International Prize for Poetry, The Walrus Poetry Prize, and the CBC Poetry Prize. In 2019 she won the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing. Her poems have appeared widely in journals including The Malahat Review, Poetry Canada Review, Poetry Ireland and New Orleans Review, and she has given readings across Canada, Ireland, Portugal, Brazil, the UK and the United States.

Dawn Watson is the author of We Play Here (Granta Poetry), a Guardian Poetry Book of the Year. It was shortlisted for the PEN Heaney Prize 2024 and the John Pollard International Poetry Prize. Her pamphlet The Stack of Owls is Getting Higher is published by The Emma Press. Dawn completed a PhD at the Seamus Heaney Centre in 2022 and writes essays and short stories for BBC Radio 4. Her work appears in journals including Granta and The Poetry Review. She is currently a lecturer in poetry and prose at Queen’s University Belfast.

Lucy Caldwell is the author of four novels, including These Days, winner of the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. She has also published three short story collections — Multitudes, Intimacies, and the forthcoming Openings. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, her awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the BBC National Short Story Award. In 2022 she received the EM Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts & Letters.

Wendy Erskine is the author of two short story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move. She has been shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and longlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is also a broadcaster and interviewer and works as a secondary school teacher in Belfast. Her debut novel, The Benefactors, was recently published.