Writing residency with Ruth GILLIGAN

Ruth GILLIGAN is a writer and academic from Dublin now based in the UK. She has published five novels to date and was the youngest person ever to top the Irish Bestsellers’ List.

​Her most recent novel, The Butchers, (published as The Butchers' Blessing in the US) is a literary thriller set in the Irish borderlands. It won the 2021 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, awarded to the book that best evokes the 'spirit of a place', as well as the 2024 Prix des Lecteurs at the Festival Littératures Européennes.

​She holds degrees from Cambridge, Yale, UEA and Exeter. She contributes regular literary reviews to the Guardian, Irish Independent and Times Literary Supplement. She works at the University of Birmingham as their first ever Professor of Creative Writing, and is an ambassador for the global storytelling charity Narrative 4.​