What is the N4
Artists Network?

Ruth Gilligan is a writer and academic from Dublin now based in the UK. She has published five books 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 during the 1996 BSE crisis. Ruth holds degrees works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. from Cambridge, Yale, UEA and Exeter. She contributes literary reviews to the Irish Independent, Guardian, TLS and LA Review of Books.

Christine Dwyer Hickey was born in Dublin and is a novelist and short story writer. Her latest novel The Narrow Land (2019) won two major prizes in the year 2020 – the Walter Scott Prize for Literary Fiction and the inaugural Dalkey Literary Award. 2020 also saw her novel Tatty (2004) chosen as UNESCOs Dublin One City One Book.

Colm Mac Con Iomaire is an Irish musician and composer. His father’s people came from the Connemara Gaeltacht. On his mother’s side there was classical instrumental music on the violin and piano. His first musical collaboration happened while he was still in school, a contemporary trad band Kíla. Playing in Kíla was accompanied by a long spell busking with band members in Dublin streets. A friendship with another busker Glen Hansard was followed by a leap into the professional mainstream and a new role, playing fiddle with the wildly popular Frames. From there, he was invited to write scores for films and has released his own solo albums. His new record is titled The River Holds Its Breath / Tost Ar An Abhainn.

Colum McCann is President and Co-Founder of Narrative 4, which he began to help shape in 2004. He is the author of six novels and three collections of stories. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, has been the recipient of many international honours, including the National Book Award, the International Dublin Impac Prize, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government, election to the Irish arts academy, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China, and an Oscar nomination. In 2017 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts. His work has been published in over 40 languages. His most recent novel, Apeirogon was a New York Times bestseller, and winner of several international prizes.

Mary O’Malley was born in Connemara in Ireland and educated at University College Galway. She lived in Lisbon for eight years and taught at Universidade Nova. She served on the council of Poetry Ireland and was on the Committee of the Cúirt International Poetry Festival for eight years. She was the author of its educational programme. She taught on the MA programmes for Writing and Education in the Arts at NUI Galway for ten years, held the Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University in 2013, and has held Residencies in Paris, Tarragona, New York, NUI Galway, as well as in Derry, Belfast. She is active in environmental education, specifically marine. She is a member of Aosdána and has won a number of awards for her poetry, including the 2016 Arts Council University of Limerick Writer’s Fellowship. She was the Trinity Writer Fellow at the Oscar Wilde Centre for 2019.