Sinéad Gleeson is a writer, editor, freelance broadcaster and journalist.
Her published essays include ‘Blue Hills and Chalk Bones‘, in Granta, as part of their new Irish writing volume (May 2016) ‘Hibernia, Caledonia’, in Winter Papers Vol. 2 (November 2016) edited by Kevin Barry and Olivia Smith; Your Chroma‘ in Gorse Issue 8 (April 2017, published online here); ‘Islander’ in Elsewhere Journal: Issue 5 (July 2017) “Dublin’s Mountains and the Hell Fire Club”, in Autumn: An Anthology for the Changing Seasons (August 2016), edited by Melissa Harrison; ‘Hair’ in literary journal Banshee Vol. 1 (September 2015) and ‘ In April 2017, a poem – ‘At Killough Lighthouse’ – was published in Washing Windows? Irish Women Write Poetry (Arlen House) an anthology of 100 poems by Irish women writers.
Her short story ‘Counting Bridges’ was longlisted for the 2016 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards and a 500-word flash fiction story ‘Fathoms’ was highly commended at Dromineer Literary Festival in October 2015. Sinéad was also shortlisted for the 2016 Fish Memoir Prize. In 2016, Thin Places (a work-in-progress) made the final eigth of 885 entries for the inaugural Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award
In 2015, The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers, was published and features 30 short stories, including work by Maeve Brennan, Anne Enright, Elizabeth Bowen, Eimear McBride, Lisa McInerney and more. It won the Best Irish Published Book at the BGE Irish Book Awards in 2015. A round-up of radio and print interviews, features, reviews and panel events is here. The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women from the North of Ireland, won Best Irish Published Book at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards in 2016. In 2012 she edited the short story anthology, Silver Threads of Hope, published by New Island, which featured authors Kevin Barry, Emma Donoghue, Colum McCann, Mary Costello, Roddy Doyle and more.
Currently, she presents The Book Show on RTE Radio One.
Sinéad regularly chairs panel discussions at arts festivals and has conducted public interviews with writers, film-directors, actors and musicians including Martin Amis, Edna O’Brien, Caitlin Moran, Ian McEwan, Donna Tartt, Sebastian Barry, Dylan Moran, Lynn Barber, Patrick deWitt, Daniel Woodrell, Kate Atkinson, Joseph O’Neill, Joanna Trollope, Ron Rash, Lenny Abrahamson, Judy Blume, Willy Vlautin, Aidan Gillen, Paul Murray, Lisa Hannigan, Alistair McLeod and Elizabeth Gilbert.
Her debut collection of essays, Constellations, will be published by Picador in Spring 2019. She is currently working on a novel.
Agent: Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White.
Follow Sinéad on Twitter.