Jack Gilligan has worked in arts administration for approximately twenty five years. He served as Dublin City Arts Officer for sixteen years up to his retirement in October 2009. He was responsible for the preparation, negotiation and management of the annual arts programming budget and the delivery of the city’s arts service. He initiated and managed an Artist in Residence programme involving writers, musicians, dancers, film-makers and visual artists. Jack played a key role in the establishment of The LAB arts centre which opened, under his management, in 2005. He established the highly successful Dublin Writers' Festival which celebrates the best of Irish and international writing and has become a major international literary event.  

Mia Gallagher writes novels, short stories and for the theatre. Her short fiction has been published in Ireland, the UK and the US. She won the START Short Fiction award (2005) and was shortlisted for the Hennessy (1991), Fish (2004) and Trevor/ Bowen (2011) Awards. Her debut novel HellFire (Penguin Ireland, 2006) was critically acclaimed and received the Irish Tatler Literature Award (2007). Extracts from her second novel have been published in Literary Imagination (OUP, UK: 2012) and Spolia (Issue 2, US: 2013). Mia has received several Bursaries for Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and was writer-in-residence with IADT/dlr Arts Office (2009-2010). Her theatre work – as a deviser, writer and performer – has toured widely in Ireland and abroad.

June Considine was born in Dublin and is the author of fifteen novels for adults and children. Her most recent novel The Prodigal Sister, published internationally by Avon/Harper Collins in June 2009, was written under her pen name Laura Elliot. She has also worked as a freelance journalist and magazine editor. Her novels include When The Bough Breaks and Deceptions (New Island). Her books for children include The Luvender Trilogy, View from a Blind Bridge, The Glass Triangle, and the Beachwood series for young adults (Poolbeg Press). She is currently working on her latest novel Stolen Child (Avon/ Harper Collins) due for publication in 2010. Her short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies and featured on RTE’s Fiction 15 series.

Rossa is the youngest of six brothers who were brought up speaking Irish in Sandymount, Dublin to publisher Pádraigh Ó Snodaigh and Sculptor Cliodhna Cussen. He attended Scoil Lorcáin and Coláiste Eoin where he set up the now internationally renowned group Kíla. A multi-instrumentalist, Rossa has composed music for theatre, dance and films including the Oscar nominated animation The Secret Of Kells. He ran People and their Poetry, the Dublin Drum Circle and Speakers’ Square in Dublinand through his company An Puball Gaeilge, he continues to organise Irish language events at festivals like the Electric Picnic. He had a show on Raidió na Life and now reports for TG4's arts show Imeall. He has had three books published The Joy of Pissing, Making Out in Irish and Our Fada and recently produced and co-directed the radio play Pat the Pipe Píobaire.

Not the author (nor related to the patriot!). Kevin was born in Zambia, and grew up in Limerick. He is a solicitor and the managing partner of his firm, O’Shea Barry, in Dublin. He qualified from Trinity College Dublin in 1980 with an honours degree in law. He brings his commercial skills to the Board having had a lifelong interest in the arts, particularly theatre and the performing arts.

Martina Devlin is a journalist and author, with five novels and two non-fiction books published. Her novels include Ship of Dreams, about the Titanic shipwreck. Non-fiction includes Banksters, co-authored with RTE’s David Murphy, about the Irish banking collapse. In 2012 she won the Royal Society of Literature's VS Pritchett Prize for a short story. She has also won a Hennessy Literary Prize and was shortlisted twice for the Irish Book Awards. She writes a column on current affairs for the Irish Independent and was named National Newspapers of Ireland commentator of the year in 2011, and GALA journalist of the year in 2010. She contributes short stories to RTE's Sunday Miscellany radio programme, and was 2009 writer-in-residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco.