12 March, 2026

Announcing the Awardees of New Voices: North 2026

We are delighted to announce the ten writers selected to participate on New Voices: North 2026: Kara Barlow, Joshua Beatty, Ben Behzadafshar, Tiffany Eaton, Elaine Gormley, Katharina Maria Kalinowski, Cónal McGlinchey, Niall McKenna, Sean Rowan and Ryan Wiles.

The second installment in a new, all-island development series, New Voices: North is a three-month development programme that will provide ten emerging writers living in the North of Ireland with the sustained support of an experienced writer-mentor. The programme will culminate in a showcase hosted by the Belfast Book Festival, which will take place in the summer.

The six writers selected in the fiction strand are Ben Behzadafshar, Tiffany Eaton, Elaine Gormley, Cónal McGlinchey, Niall McKenna and Ryan Wiles. They will be mentored by Jan Carson and Susannah Dickey.

The four writers selected in the poetry strand are Kara Barlow, Joshua Beatty, Katharina Maria Kalinowski and Sean Rowan. They will be mentored by Stephen Sexton.

Read more about the awardees and judges below.

New Voices: North 2026 is supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Meet the Awardees

Kara Barlow is a trilingual poet with an MA in Poetry from Queen’s University Belfast, recipient of the Seamus Heaney Scholarship. She has lived internationally and considers her work a translation exercise between trauma, resilience, and longing. Her poems have been published in the Bear Review, Letters Journal, Ragaire, and the Silver Press Tendrils anthology.

Joshua Beatty is from Ellesmere Port and lives in Belfast. He received an MA in Poetry from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast in 2024, and was a Young Writer Delegate to the Belfast Book Festival 2025. Whilst at Queen’s, he was a contributing editor to the student-led literary magazine, The Apiary. Among other journals, his poems and reviews have appeared in Eascair, York Literary Review, The Ogham Stone, and The Apiary.

Ben Behzadafshar is a writer and gardener from Belfast. His work has featured in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, and The Waxed Lemon. He lives with his wife and their dramatic dog.

Tiffany Eaton (Dark) moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Belfast, Northern Ireland in 2023. She has written stories since childhood, but lately she has drawn inspiration from the Irish literature landscape and her immigrant experience to compile a short story collection. She also makes time to participate in creative writing courses. Most recently, she attended ‘Writing in an Age of Emergency’ with the Irish Writers Centre. She integrates current and past sociopolitical issues in her birthplace of the United States and her home of Northern Ireland into her work.

Elaine Gormley is an Irish writer from Armagh, based in Belfast. She holds a BA in Drama and Film Studies from Queen’s University, where she is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing. Her work reflects the humour and resilience of working-class people living in the North of Ireland and has been featured in Apricot Press, New Word Order, Fieldzine and Swerve. She has been shortlisted for the Exeter Prize and the Canterbury Literary Festival Short Story Award and was a guest reader at the Munster Literature Festival. Elaine can be found on Instagram @elainegormleywriter.

Katharina Maria Kalinowski grew up in the North of Germany and started writing poetry to escape her home country’s obsession with rules. From 2017 to 2020, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the universities of Cologne, Kent, and Dublin, where she completed a PhD on ecopoetics and ecotranslation. In 2024, she moved to Derry and now works as a freelance writer, translator, and community workshop facilitator. Her writing can be found in The Honest Ulsterman, The Irish Poetry Reading Archive, The Belfast Review, and elsewhere.

Cónal McGlinchey is a writer from Strabane, Northern Ireland. He writes short fiction and has been published in Ulster University’s Books Beyond Boundaries. He has previously received two bursaries from the Irish Writer’s Centre and is currently a junior editor for the upcoming Sci-Fi Ireland magazine.

Niall McKenna is a writer and performer from Belfast. He studied Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School, and has attended the John Hewitt and Stinging Fly Summer Schools. He is currently redrafting his novel Farset and writing speculative short stories. He works at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Belfast.

Sean Rowan is a poet from Derry, Northern Ireland. They hold a Master’s in English Literature from the University of Galway and are preparing to begin a PhD there. Their work has appeared in Ropes Literary Journal and A New Ulster. In 2025, they were longlisted for the Four Faced Liar Poetry Prize and selected as a Young Writer Delegate for the Belfast Book Festival. Sean has performed at the 2025 Cúirt International Festival of Literature, with Oil Slick Poetry, and alongside Turas Ur on Inis Boffin, Co. Donegal. Their writing is shaped by a sustained engagement with Irish literary tradition and contemporary poetics.

Ryan Wiles is from Belfast. His stories have appeared in The Honest Ulsterman, Crossways Magazine, and Frazzled Lit. He was runner-up in the Wild Atlantic Words Competition and the Ennis Book Club Short Story Competition, and has been longlisted for the Write By The Sea Competition, the Creative Writing Ink Competition, and the Cúirt New Writing Prize. He read English at Queen’s University Belfast and attended the Stinging Fly Summer School for Fiction (2024). He is currently working on a novel and a short story collection.

Meet the Mentors

Jan Carson is a writer based in Belfast. She has published three novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019. Jan’s latest novel, The Raptures was published by Doubleday in early 2022 and was subsequently shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her short story collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses was published by Doubleday (UK) in April 2024 and Scribner (US) in July 2024. Her writing has been aired on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and RTE. She was the Seamus Heaney Centre Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast 2025 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her first stage play, an adaptation of the children’s classic The Velveteen Rabbit was produced by Replay Theatre Company at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast in March 2025. Her next novel Few and Far Between is forthcoming in early 2026.

Susannah Dickey is a writer from Derry. She is the author of Tennis Lessons (2020) and Common Decency (2022). Her third novel, Into The Wreck, will be published by Bloomsbury in April 2026. Her debut poetry collection, ISDAL, was a Guardian and Irish Times Book of the Year, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and won the inaugural PEN Heaney Prize and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. She lives in Belfast.

Stephen Sexton is the author of two books of poems: If All the World and Love Were Young (Penguin 2019), winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and Cheryl’s Destinies (Penguin, 2021). In 2020, he was awarded the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. He teaches at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast.