Artist Bios

Artist/Author
Carmel Harrington

Carmel Harrington is a USA Today, Irish Times and Amazon bestselling novelist from Co. Wexford. Her debut novel was awarded Kindle Book of the Year and Romantic Novel of the Year and since then, several books have been shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards, Popular Fiction Book of the Year. Carmel has been described as a storyteller who writes with heart, humour and hope, capturing the issues facing families and relationships in modern Ireland. Her tenth novel, A Mother’s Heart became an instant Irish Times Bestseller. Previous novels include the USA Today bestseller The Moon Over Kilmore Quay, A Thousand Roads Home, The Woman at 72 Derry Lane and the ITV commissioned novel, Cold Feet The Lost Years. Published in fourteen territories, Carmel’s books are translated into nine languages. She is also a regular on Irish TV screens as a panelist on shows that include, Midday and Elaine. Carmel has been a guest speaker at Literary events in Ireland, UK and USA. To keep in touch with Carmel, follow her on social media or visit her website. Twitter | Facebook | Instagram @HappyMrsH www.carmelharrington.com
Edwina Forkin 

Edwina Forkin has over twenty years experience in Film and Television production. Currently the creative producer and CEO of Zanzibar Films, Edwina is an award winning producer/ line producer and has a solid track record in film, digital and online media. She has extensive experience in identifying exciting and innovative projects, raising finance, planning and delivering projects, from Oscar nominated shorts to ground-breaking documentaries. Edwina’s debut Feature HEADRUSH (2003) has four international awards to its credit. Her second feature SUGAR premiered in Sundance 2005 and screened in competition at Edinburgh & Thessaloniki film festivals. SWANSONG – the story of Occi Byrne (2010) six IFTA nominations - Winner of Best Actor - IFTA 2011, 2 GRAVES – director Yvonne McDevitt, (2011) She is also involved as co-producer on feature films DOT.COM (2006) & JOHNNY WAS (2005) and associate producer on SOUL BOY (2009) NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR (2012) and on film THE YANK (2013) SAOL – (2014) GAELIC CURSE (2015), RED MOON RISING (2015) and SANCTUARY (2016) – WINNER FIRST BEST FEATURE GALWAY FILM FLEADH, Michael Dwyer Discovery Award - Audi Dublin International Film Festival and Best Director – Newport Beach International Film Festival, Malta International Film Festival - Best Story and Austrian International Film Festival - Best Film (2017) AITHRI – (2017) THE GREEN SEA (2018) ROYALLY EVER AFTER (2018), FOREVER IN MY HEART (2019). BUTTERFLY DIARIES (2020) and THE GREEN SEA (2020) CLUELESS IN IRELAND (2021) AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT (2021) THE CRY OF GRANUAILE (2022) Her feature length documentaries are AIDAN WALSH - MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE (2002) and BREAKING BOUNDARIES – the Irish Cricket team’s world cup (2008) -Shimmy Marcus’s feature documentary GOOD CAKE BAD CAKE (2011) and Patrick Jolley’s feature documentary - A DOOR A JAR (2011) CAMBODIAN SPRING (2016) a feature documentary of Chris Kelly. JURY WINNER OF HOT DOCS - TORONTO 2017 and BROOKLYN FILM FESTIVAL 2017. Just had an UK/Irish release with IFB & BFI distribution support. BAFTA Winner. Edwina Forkin produced for Taylormade Films - JACK TAYLOR TV films for the series – PRIEST (2012), THE SORROWS (2012) and SHOT DOWN. (2013) and is in development with Andrea Carter’s INISHOWEN MYSTERIES Trilogy. She is working is currently in pre THE CHRISTMAS BREAK and on post on ALS BRAND and MY SAILOR MY LOVE.
Declan O'Rourke

Declan O’Rourke’s award-winning album, Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine, was released to critical acclaim in 2017. It illuminated an extraordinary series of eye-witness accounts, including the story of Pádraig and Cáit ua Buachalla. Four years on, in Declan’s meticulously researched literary debut, the story of the ua Buachalla family is woven into a powerful, multilayered work showing us the famine as it happened through the lens of a single town – Macroom, Co. Cork – and its environs. Local pawnbroker Cornelius Creed is at the juncture between the classes. Sensitive and empathetic, he is a voice on behalf of the poor, and his story is entwined with that of Pádraig ua Buachalla. Through these characters – utilising local history and documentary evidence - Declan creates a kaleidoscopic view of this defining moment in Ireland’s history. Declan O’Rourke’s artistry has been described as ‘proffering reassurance in the face of inevitable sorrow’ by Jon Pareles, chief music critic of the New York Times. ‘Galileo’ was described by Paul Weller as the song he most wished he’d written from the past 30 years. Other notable fans of O’Rourke are the Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, Imelda May, Pete Townshend and Eddi Reader, who described Declan as ‘one of the finest songwriters on the planet’. ‘A powerful and gripping piece of writing from a born storyteller, a tale shaped with the lyricism of a songwriting giant.’ –Joseph O’Connor, author of Star of the Sea. ‘Immensely personal.’ – John Boyne, The Irish Times and author of ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.’ “A detailed and evocative telling of one of our nation’s darkest stories. The Pawnbroker’s Reward brings the famine to life and infuses it with a humanity often missing from historical accounts.” – Ray Darcy, broadcaster, RTÉ Radio 1. “Holds absolutely nothing back … Brilliantly Realised.” – Éilis O’Regan, Irish Independent. “Beautifully achieved … I think he’s started a whole new great career for himself.”– Nadine O’Regan, Sunday Business Post. ‘The narrative is just like his singing voice, full of powerful strength and compassion; a born storyteller in words as well as in music.’ – Michael Harding, author, columnist, playwright. ‘Lucid, lovingly-written and lyrical, The Pawnbroker’s Reward faithfully captures the horrors of the early months of the Great Hunger.’ – Professor Christine Kinealy, historian, author, founding director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute, Quinnipiac. “A fantastic piece of work. It is amazing. Based on real people and informed by contemporary records of the time. The research in the book is impeccable.“ – Pat Kenny, broadcaster, Newstalk FM.
Derville Murphy

Derville Murphy was born in 1956 in Birmingham, UK. When she was thirteen her family returned home to Ireland. She qualified from DIT as an architect in 1978, and then worked for over twenty years as Group Architect and Art Curator for Bank of Ireland. At fifty-two, to fulfil a lifetime’s ambition she went back to college and completed an MPhil in Irish Art History – and in 2015, in UCD, a PhD in Art and architecture. She also set up her own company art@work, art consultancy. Murphy is also an artist who has exhibited widely in Ireland and her works are in several public and private art collections. Her academic articles have been published in the Irish Art Review, Architecture Ireland and History Ireland and her short stories in Ireland’s Own and Woman’s Way. Her first two novels were released by Poolbeg Press through amazon during Covid: The Art Collector’s Daughter in 2020, and If Only She Knew in 2021. A Perfect Copy is her debut novel to be traditionally published. She lives between Sandymount, Dublin and Fethard on Sea, Wexford, and is married with two daughters and ‘adorable’ twin grandchildren.
Des Kiely

Des Kiely is by profession a graphic designer living in Wexford. He can trace his family history back to the village of Stradbally in County Waterford and to the house where his great-great-great grandfather John Kiely, a fisherman, was born in 1778. The family moved north to Derry and again back south to Dublin, then Wicklow, so Des has almost completed the journey back home to Waterford. His hobbies include photography, art and music. He has written five bestselling books on Wexford history: Famous Wexford People in History and Fascinating Wexford History, Volumes One, Two and Three. Volume Four is due to be published later this year.
Fintan Murphy

Fintan Murphy from Mayglass, Wexford has been involved in amateur drama and literary pursuits all his life. Early acting experience in school and with the Mayglass Dramatic Class gave him the bug, and led to him becoming a founder member of Ennis Players and later Ballycogley Players. He has acted and directed with both groups. He has had poetry, short stories, articles and humorous pieces published in various newspapers, magazines, journals and anthologies. He has written award-winning one-act adaptations of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, and of his own short story a Bit of a Break. His first book of poetry Slender Toward the Sky was published in 2006, and was a local best-seller. He has edited the anthology Quintet for Rathmines Writers Group, and was joint editor of Landmarks of My Youth, and One Shade of Green for Ballycogley Heritage Group and the anthology Some Write with Glue for South Wexford Writers Group.
Richard Keane

Richard Keane is an award-winning filmmaker that works as a writer, director and producer in both animation and live-action. Since 2003, Richard has worked at several high-profile animation studios in both Ireland and the UK. He has been involved in many BAFTA, Emmy and IFTA award-winning productions that have been broadcast in over 200 territories worldwide. While at Brown Bag Films, he directed on DisneyJr’s Peabody award-winning series DOC McSTUFFINS, Nickelodeon’s BUTTERBEAN’S CAFÉ and wrote and directed the award-winning Screen Ireland short BIRD FOOD. Richard has also written, directed and produced several live-action short films that have been screened at prolific film festivals around the world. His short CHICKEN OUT has won several awards worldwide. In 2015, Richard founded the Dublin based, boutique production company Out Left Productions. It has already produced several high-end animated and award-winning live-action projects, and has been developing many more to bring to market in the near future.
Susan Tomaselli 

Susan Tomaselli is founder and editor of gorse journal. She has written for numerous publications, introduced a re-issue of Mervyn Wall’s Leaves For the Burning (Swan River Press), and has contributed to the books We’ll Never Have Paris (Repeater Books 2019), In Context 4 – In Our Time (South Dublin County Council’s programme of public art), amongst others. She has participated in numerous literary festivals (West Cork Literary Festival, Cúirt, Listowel, Mountains to Sea, Hillsborough Festival of Literature & Ideas), curated Doolin Writers’ Weekend 2020, and provides consultation to arts organisations (Temple Bar Gallery + Studios Dublin, The Arts Foundation UK) and literary publishers. She was writer-in-residence at Maynooth University 2020/21, and is currently working on a novel-in-essays, Traces.
Imelda Carroll

Imelda won Scripts, Ireland’s Playwriting Festival and the Kilmore Write by the Sea Short Story Competition in 2016. She wrote and directed Lisa Go Home for Wexford Women’s Refuge the same year. In 2017 her piece Then and Now was performed in the Octagon Theatre in Bolton. She took part in the Wexford Screen Writing course with Bodecii Film and Wexford County Council Arts Department. This led to a collaboration with Richard Keane and Out Left Productions and her screenplay Chicken Out was chosen by the DLR First Frames funding scheme in 2019. Chicken Out has won many awards including Best Short Screen Play at the Dublin International Comedy Film Festival 2022. Imelda took part in the Wexford Playwrights Studio funded by Wexford County Council Arts Department with her play Forlorn Point. Imelda is a member of Word Play and has had several short pieces performed with the writers and actors group. She recently received a week long Writers Residency on Bardsey Island in Wales with Write4Word and Wexford County Council Arts Department. Her short story The Promise was recently published in The Wexford Bohemian magazine. Imelda works for Wexford Library Service.