25 May, 2026
Announcing our 2026 International Lamplight Fellows
The Irish Writers Centre and Varuna, The National Writers’ Centre, Australia, are delighted to announce that four writers have been selected for the 2026 International Lamplight Fellowship.
About the Residency
This is a two-week online opportunity for fiction writers to enjoy the combined mentorship and support of both organisations. It offers inspiration for writing, the benefits of professional development opportunities, and an opportunity to develop international connections with others to help writers sustain their creative practice. This opportunity is exclusively for Irish Writers Centre Members with two published books.
About the Awardees
A winner of the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award, Niamh Boyce has fictionalized real-life criminal trials in her novels. The Herbalist was an Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair Winner, and an Irish Book Award winner. Her Kind was based on the Kilkenny Witchcraft Trial and nominated for the EU Prize for Literature. Her latest, The Writer’s House, weaves together the Irish Famine, Bog Bodies and Victorian Seances and is out on submission. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as The Stinging Fly, Banshee, The Long Gaze Back and Galway Stories. She’s currently working on another Irish trial.
Patrick Chapman has published sixteen books since 1991, including fiction, poetry and nonfiction. His latest publications are Robert Forster’s Danger in the Past (Bloomsbury, 33 1/3 series), and The Following Year (Salmon Poetry), shortlisted for the 2025 Farmgate Café National Poetry Award. He has also written for film, radio and television. A former editor of poetry magazine The Pickled Body, in 2026 he co-founded Silver Locust Press. He lives in Dublin.
Byddi Lee is the author of Barren (shortlisted for the Carousel Aware Prize 2025), The Rejuvenation Trilogy, and March to November. She writes short fiction, plays and screenplays and was selected for BBC Writers’ Room Voices 2023. Her play, Toxic Relationships, has been performed by Armagh Theatre Group (ATG) in venues across Ireland between 2023 and 2026. She co-founded Flash Fiction Armagh, is supported by the Arts Council NI and holds professional membership of the Irish Writers Centre.
Fiona McKay is the author of the novellas-in-flash, The Lives of the Dead (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2025) and The Top Road (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023), and the flash fiction collection Drawn and Quartered (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). She was a SmokeLong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow in 2023. Her flash fiction is in The Storms, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, The Forge, The Four Faced Liar, trampset, Fractured Lit and others. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions 2024. She lives in Dublin, Ireland.
