Kate Barry is a writer and secondary school teacher who lives in Cork City. Her work has appeared in the Sunday Tribune, Social & Personal and Metropolitan, and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She has twice been shortlisted for a Hennessy New Irish Writing Award, and longlisted for the Colm Tóibín Short Story Award.

Shane Coleman is the presenter of Newstalk Breakfast and the popular podcast ‘Top Five Books’. He is a former Political Editor and Business Editor of the Sunday Tribune newspaper. A regular columnist for the Sunday Independent, he is also the author of four books on Irish politics, including Bertie Ahern and the Drumcondra Mafia and Scandal Nation: Key Events that Shook and Shaped Ireland. 

Vanessa Conneely is a former TV producer and presenter who now works as a Communications Manager with NASC, the Cork-based Migrant and Refugee Rights Centre. Before moving to Kinsale, she lived in Canada, Qatar, Turkey and Malta, working for organisations such as Al Jazeera, TRT World, and the Irish Times.

Mairéad Hearne is an Irish blogger from Cork with a passion for reading. Since establishing her blog, Swirl and Thread, in 2016, Mairéad has developed relationships with many authors, publishers and fellow book bloggers across the globe. She has hosted events both online and in-person. Her favourite genres are historical, contemporary, crime/psychological thrillers and literary fiction.

Mairéad works for Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin and the Irish online literary website, writing.ie. Her reviews can be found on her blog www.swirlandthread.com .

JJ Hurley is chairperson of Kinsale Cultural and Heritage Society and a graduate of history and sociology from UCC. In addition to his knowledge of local history, particularly the War of Independence, he also contributes to local media as a freelance journalist

Adrian Wistreich left corporate life and moved to Kinsale to start Kinsale Pottery and Arts Centre. In 2016, Adrian returned to university to study for an MA in Creative Writing in UCC and has since published three novels: Miriam (2018), based on a true story a family of wealthy Jews trapped in Poland during WW2, It’s Good for You (2019), and a dystopian science fiction thriller, Joe (2020), a sequel to Miriam, examining the inheritance of dysfunction.