James Harpur, Arts Council-TCD Irish Writer Fellow 2023
James Harpur has published eight collections of poetry, including his two latest volumes, The Examined Life, an odyssey through boarding school, which received the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize; and The Oratory of Light, poems inspired by St Columcille / Columba. He has won a number of prizes and awards for his books, including the UK National Poetry Competition and the Michael Hartnett Poetry Prize. Last year he published his debut novel, The Pathless Country, set in the years leading up to the 1916 Rising and featuring a young hero trying to seek spiritual meaning in life. The book won the JG Farrell Award, an Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair award, and was shortlisted for the John McGahern Prize. James is a member of Aosdána.