Thank you to all our Contributors!

John Quinn trained as a teacher and worked in that profession for a decade. After a number of years as an editor, John joined RTÉ and delivered some of RTÉ’s finest programmes. His radio work resulted not only in national awards and international acclaim, but also led to important publications. Following the untimely death of his wife Olive, John produced a deeply moving personal documentary. The books that followed are equally powerful.  John is a much loved, award winning writer. Common threads shine through all his work. He believes in the importance of building up our human community in peace and civility. 

Omagh-born Martina Devlin is a journalist and author. In 2012 she won the Royal Society of Literature’s VS Pritchett Prize for a short story. Her books include “Banksters”, co-authored with RTE’s David Murphy, “Ship of Dreams” a novel about the Titanic, and a memoir, “The Hollow Heart.” She writes a weekly current affairs column for the Irish Independent and was named 2011 columnist of the year by the National Newspapers of Ireland. She has also won a Hennessy Literary Award, was shortlisted twice for the Irish Book of the Year awards, and was writer-in-residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco.

Founder of Kanchi and The Ability Awards, Caroline Casey is driving societal change aimed at a complete reframing of disability. Caroline’s vision for Kanchi is to create an inclusive world for people with disabilities by engaging the business and media worlds on their own terms.  The first Irish person to be appointed a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, Caroline is also an Ashoka Fellow, an Eisenhower Fellow, and holds an honorary doctorate from National University Ireland. She travels the globe presenting at prestigious events. Caroline is visually impaired – however, she has never experienced this as a limitation. 

  

Róisín Ingle is an Irish Times journalist and author. Collected together for the first time in her book “Pieces of Me: A Life-in-Progress”, Roisin Ingle's weekly columns from The Irish Times Magazine display her disarmingly open style, always humorous, often deeply affecting. She muses on life, love, and everything in between.  The columns are accompanied by new writings in which she reflects on the death of her father, her failed marriage, her unlikely path into journalism, and her long-standing love affair with Borza's fish and chips. Roisin lives in Dublin with her boyfriend and their two daughters. She believes all the best families are slightly dysfunctional.

Dr Leeann Lane, a graduate of UCC and Boston College, is Head of Irish Studies and Head of the School of Humanities at Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin. She has published on George Russell, on the children's novelist Patricia Lynch and is writer of one of our 100 Books with a Difference, “Rosamond Jacob: Third Person Singular”. A course writer and tutor of a history module on a distance education Bachelor of Arts programme, Dr Lane was recently nominated to the Advisory Group on Centenary Commemorations. She is currently working on a study of single women in the early Free State period and is a committee member of the Women's History Association of Ireland.

Baroness Nuala O’Loan DBE, MRIA is a member of the UK House of Lords and Chair of the Governing Authority of NUI Maynooth.  Ireland's Roving Ambassador for Conflict Resolution and Special Envoy to Timor Leste, she also works with the International Contact Group Basque in Spain.  As Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, she was responsible for investigating the police. She has chaired and served on public bodies in areas as diverse as the European Union, Health, Transport, Policing, Human Rights and Energy. Her writing on justice, policing, and faith has been influential and she speaks regularly across the world.  She has acted in an advisory capacity to government agencies responsible for policing and police accountability, in Africa, Asia, India, Europe and North and South America.  She is the wife of Declan O'Loan MLA and they have 5 sons.

Úna-Minh Kavanagh was adopted from Vietnam by a Kerry woman and has been living in Ireland since she was six weeks old. The 22 year old, who has a degree in Irish and Journalism, now works as a journalist up in Dublin. Throughout the years she’s been the subject of racial abuse both verbal and physical because of how she looks. She hopes that by speaking out about her experiences, people will acknowledge that this still happens in Ireland and that something might be done about it.

Reverend Elizabeth Hewitt was ordained in 1983 to the Methodist Church in Ireland. She was officially welcomed as the Minister of the Methodist Church’s Adare and Ballingrane Circuit in July 2011 and is Convener for Inter-Church Relations for the Methodist Church in Ireland. She served as Superintendent of Glenavy and Moira Circuit and as Chaplain in the Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice. Reverend Hewitt worked with CRUSE Bereavement Care on a project entitled “Remember your Child.”

Dr Eibhear Walshe is a senior lecturer in the Department of Modern English at University College Cork. His biography “Kate O’Brien: A Writing Life” was published in 2006 and he edited “Elizabeth Bowen: Visions and Revisions” in 2008. He was a section editor for “The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing: Volume 4”; a contributor to “The New Dictionary of Biography” and guest edited “The Irish Review” in 2000. His other publications include a range of edited collections.  He has completed a study of Wilde and Modern Ireland. His memoir, “Cissie’s Abattoir” was published in 2009 and he has just completed his first novel.

 John Joe Nevin was born in June 1989.  He is a native of Mullingar, Co Westmeath. He attended Scoil Mhuire Christian Brothers School and is a member of the Traveller community. He won a gold medal in the bantamweight division in the European Amateur Championships in June 2013 when he outclassed Mykola Butsenko from Belarus.

He won the Irish National Championships and qualified for the 2008 Summer Olympics at age 18 and four years later qualified for the 2012 Olympics where he won a won a silver medal. In the semi-final he defeated the reigning bantamweight world champion Lazaro Alvarez from Cuba. He is currently the number one ranked amateur bantamweight boxer in the world.  He boxes out of the Cavan Boxing Club under Coach Brian McKeown.