Isabelle Baafi is the author of Chaotic Good (Faber & Faber / Wesleyan University Press, 2025), which won both the Forward Prize and the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and is longlisted for the Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her pamphlet Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020) won a Somerset Maugham Award and was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. She edits at Poetry London and Magma. 

Matthew Rice is from Belfast. His debut collection, The Last Weather Observer, was an Arts Council of Northern Ireland top ten books of the year pick in 2021. He is the Ciaran Carson Writing and the City Fellow for 2026 at The Seamus Heaney Centre. His latest book is plastic, published with Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK/Europe) and Soft Skull Press (US). 

Jan Carson has published three novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019. Jan’s latest and The Raptures was published by Doubleday in early 2022 and was subsequently shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her short story collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses was published in 2024. 

In her magically surreal new novel, Few and Far Between, Jan Carson tells the story of an island sanctuary on Lough Neagh where people can be free of the prejudices and history of the Troubles era of Northern Ireland, but sometimes, Utopia is not all that it seems… 

‘Few and Far Between is Jan Carson’s most ambitious novel yet … It’s also very, very funny.’ Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days 

“Jan Carson … one of the most exciting and original Northern Ireland writers of her generation.” Lisa McInerney 

Wendy Erskine is the author of two prize-winning short story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move. Her debut novel, The Benefactors, was shortlisted for best novel at the 2025 Irish Book Awards