Writing for our Times: Hannah Lavery, Wayne Miller & Róisín Lanigan

How do writers respond to the times we live in? 

From the pandemic to global violence, US poet Wayne Miller’s The End of Childhood (Milkweed, 2025) explores how individuals are shaped by – and defy – the sweep of history.

Scottish writer Hannah Lavery’s plays and poetry collections, including Unwritten Woman (Birlinn, 2024), examine social justice, race, feminism and class. 

Belfast writer Róisín Lanigan’s I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There (Fig Tree, 2025) is a darkly funny novel about the horrors of the housing crisis. 

Join us for a conversation on the power of writing in turbulent times. 

Hannah Lavery is an award-winning poet and playwright. Her pamphlet, Finding Seaglass was published by Stewed Rhubarb and her poem, Scotland You’re No Mine was selected as one Scotland’s Best Poems for 2019. The Drift, her highly acclaimed autobiographical lyric play toured Scotland as part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Season 2019. She was appointed Edinburgh Makar in November 2021 for a three year term. Her debut poetry collection, Blood Salt Spring was published in March 2022 (Polygon).

Wayne Miller is the author of six poetry collections, most recently The End of Childhood (Milkweed, 2025). His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, as well as the Rilke Prize, two Colorado Book Awards, a Pushcart Prize, six awards from the Poetry Society of America, and a Fulbright to the Seamus Heaney Centre. He has co-translated two books from Albanian, most recently Moikom Zeqo's Zodiac (Zephyr, 2015), shortlisted for the PEN Center USA Award in Translation. He lives in Denver, where he teaches at the University of Colorado Denver and edits the journal Copper Nickel.

Róisín Lanigan is an editor and writer based in London and Belfast. Her work has appeared in i-D, VICE, The Atlantic, New Statesman, The Fence and Prospect, amongst other publications. She was longlisted for the Curtis Brown First Novel Prize in 2019, and won the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award in 2020. I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There is her first novel.