Biography
Seán Hewitt, FRSL, is a poet, novelist, memoirist and critic. His first collection of poetry, Tongues of Fire (Jonathan Cape, 2020), was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and won The Laurel Prize in 2021. His second collection of poems, Rapture's Road (Jonathan Cape, 2024), was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. All Down Darkness Wide (Jonathan Cape, 2022), a memoir, won The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2022, and 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World, a collaboration with the artist Luke Edward Hall, was published by Penguin, in 2023. His debut novel is Open, Heaven (2025). Seán's work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Seán also has an ongoing interest in the literature of the Irish Revival, ecopoetics, and literature and science. His monograph J.M. Synge: Nature, Politics, Modernism, was published by Oxford University Press in 2021, and he has written on figures such as W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Roger Casement, and Emily Lawless. Seán teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate levels, on the MPhil Creative Writing, and supervises candidates for the PhD in Literary Practice. Selected Publications Open, Heaven. Novel. Jonathan Cape (2025), Knopf (USA and Canada, 2025), Einaudi (Italy, 2025), Suhrkamp (Germany, 2025), Robert Laffont (France, 2025), De Arbeiderspers (Netherlands, 2025), Solumbokvennen (Norway, 2025), Gyldendal (Denmark, 2025), Literarna Basta (Slovak, 2026), Urano (Spain, 2025), Stereoma (Greece, 2025), Paradox (Czechia, 2026), Ukraine (Athena, 2026) Rapture's Road. Poetry. Jonathan Cape (2024), Knopf (USA, 2026) Three Hundred Thousand Kisses: Queer Love in the Ancient World, illustrated by Luke Edward Hall. Translation / Anthology. Penguin: Particular Books (2023), Clarkson Potter (USA, 2023), L'Ippocampo (Italy, 2024), HarperCollins Brazil (Brazil, 2024), Eulyoo (South Korea, 2025), Editions Ducasse (France, 2025), Prometheus (Ukraine, 2026) All Down Darkness Wide. Memoir. Jonathan Cape (2022), Penguin Press (USA, 2022), Solum Bokvennen (Norway, 2022), De Arbeiderspers (Netherlands, 2023), Literarna Basta (Slovakia, 2024), Urano (Spain, 2026) J.M. Synge: Nature, Politics, Modernism. Critical study. Oxford University Press (2021) Buile Suibhne. Poems. with illustrations by Amy Jeffs. Fine Press Poetry (2021) Tongues of Fire. Poems. Jonathan Cape (2020), Knopf (USA, 2026), Einaudi (Italy, 2026)
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Seán Hewitt, Open, Heaven, Jonathan Cape, 2025
Seán Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide, London, Jonathan Cape, 2022, 1 - 240pp
Seán Hewitt, Rapture's Road, London, Jonathan Cape, 2024, 1 - 80pp
Sean Hewitt, Strange Light: New and Selected Poems, New York, Knopf, 2027, 1 - 150pp
Seán Hewitt, J.M. Synge: Nature, Politics, Modernism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021, 1-256pp
Seán Hewitt, Tongues of Fire, London, Jonathan Cape, 2020, 80pp
Seán Hewitt, Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Skies of Couple-Colour", Victorian Poetry, 58, (3), 2021
Seán Hewitt, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love in the Ancient World, London, Penguin: Particular Books, 2023, 1 - 208pp
Seán Hewitt, Emily Lawless, Natural History, and the Possibilities of Enchantment, Irish University Review, 54, (2), 2024
Queerness and Homosociality in, editor(s)Martin Dubois , Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023, [Seán Hewitt]
Nineteenth Century Contexts, (2021), Seán Hewitt ; Anna Pilz, [eds.]
Fairy and Folk Tales of Bedford Park in, editor(s)Lauren Arrington and Matthew Campbell , The Oxford Handbook of W.B. Yeats, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023, [Seán Hewitt]
Yeats's Sacred Grove in, editor(s)Susanne Hobson and Andrew Radford , The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Religion, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2023, pp285 - 298, [Seán Hewitt]
Derek Mahon's "Late Sacramental Gleam" in, editor(s)Nicholas Grene and Tom Walker , Derek Mahon: A Retrospective, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023, [Sean Hewitt]
Seán Hewitt, Comedy, Misrule and the Irish Revival, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2022
Sean Hewitt, Yeats's Re-Enchanted Nature, International Yeats Studies, 2, (2), 2018, p1 - 20
Sean Hewitt, Dialectics, Irony, and J.M. Synge's The Well of the Saints, Review of English Studies, 68, (286), 2017, p773 - 790
Sean Hewitt, "An Initiated Mystic": Modernization and Occultism in J.M. Synge's The Aran Islands, New Hibernia Review, 19, (4), 2015, p58 - 76
Sean Hewitt, "A Black Knot": Temporalities, Modernisation, and the One-Act Plays of J.M. Synge, English Studies, 97, (8), 2016, p859 - 876
Sean Hewitt, 'Writing and Evolutionary Theory', Oxford Bibliographies in British and Irish Literature, New York, Oxford University Press, 2019, -
Sean Hewitt, 'The Abbey Theatre', Oxford Bibliographies in British and Irish Literature, Oxford University Press, 2018, -
Seumas O'Sullivan and Revivalist Nature Poetry in, editor(s)Matthew Kelly , Nature and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2019, [Sean Hewitt]
Natural History and the Irish Revival in, editor(s)Kathryn Conrad, Cóilín Parsons and Julie McCormick Weng , Science, Technology, and Irish Modernism, Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 2019, [Sean Hewitt]
Emily Lawless: The Child as Natural Historian in, editor(s)Sinéad Mooney and Kathryn Laing , Irish Women's Writing at the Turn of the 20th Century, Brighton, Edward Everett Root, 2019, [Sean Hewitt]
Sean Hewitt, 'Lantern', London, Offord Road Books, 2019, -
Irish Modernism: A Queer History? in, editor(s)John Greaney, Tamara Radak, Paul Fagan , Irish Modernisms: Gaps, Conjectures, Possibilities, London, Bloomsbury, 2021, [Seán Hewitt]
Seán Hewitt, Öffnet Sich Der Himmel, Berlin, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2025
Seán Hewitt, Mod Himlen, Copenhagen, Gyldendal, 2025
Seán Hewitt, Hemel Open U, De Arbeiderspers, 2025
Seán Hewitt, Donde empieza el cielo, Plata, 2025
Sean Hewitt, untitled (Open, Heaven translation), Kyiv, Athena, 2026, 1 - 300pp
Sean Hewitt, untitled (Open, Heaven translation), Athens, Stereoma, 2026, 1 - 300pp
Sean Hewitt, untitled (Open, Heaven translation), Bratislava, Literarna Basta, 2026, 1 - 300pp
Sean Hewitt, untitled (Open, Heaven translation), Oslo, 2026, 1 - 300pp
Sean Hewitt, Cieux, Ouvrez-Vous, Paris, Robbert Laffont, 2026, 1 - 288pp
Sean Hewitt, 300,000 Baci, Rome, 2023, 1 - 250pp
Sean Hewitt, 300,000 Beijos, Brazil, Harper Collins Brasil, 2024, 1 - 208pp
Sean Hewitt, untitled (300,000 Kisses translation), Paris, Editions Ducasse, 2026, 1 - 208pp
Sean Hewitt, '""""""""""', Seoul, Eulyoo, 2025, 1 - 208pp
Sean Hewitt, untitled (All Down Darkness Wide translation), Spain, Urano, 2026, 1 - 300pp
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
Introduction in, editor(s)n/a , The Persian Boy, London, 2024, [Seán Hewitt]
Introduction in, I Put a Spell on You, London, Vintage, 2025, [Sean Hewitt]
Introduction in, Some Poems of Roger Casement, Dublin, New Island Books, 2025, [Sean Hewitt]
Introduction in, The Waking of Willie Ryan, Dublin, 2026, [Seán Hewitt]
Research Expertise
Description
My principal areas of research are in creative arts practice. Over the past five years, I have published six books, ranging from an academic monograph, memoir, poetry, translation and fiction. My works have been translated into over a dozen languages. In each of these, my focus is on the intersections of sexuality, gender, ecology and modes of spirituality and enchantment. I have written peer-reviewed articles on the literature of the Irish revival, modernism, and on contemporary poetics, and have an ongoing interest in the history of science, particularly natural history, and literature. These research interests have developed into a series of research-led modules at Trinity, and the supervision of PhD students in the areas of queer history, Irish studies, ecopoetics and the Irish novelistic tradition. I am the only practicing poet employed within the School of English, and have broader research interests in contemporary publishing and public engagement within the arts and to extending the scope and vision of the Trinity curriculum in the area of creative arts practice.Recognition
Representations
Judge for David Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award 2025
Judge for The Dylan Thomas Prize, 2024
Peer reviewer, Liverpool University Press
External assessor, University College Cork hiring committee
Judge for PEN Heaney Prize
External interviewer, Hiring Committee, UCD Assistant Professor in Creative Writing
Advisory Board Member, Diversifying Irish Poetry: Poetry Critics of Colour in Ireland
Judge for Poetry London competition
Judge for the International John Pollard Foundation Poetry Prize
Mentor, Poetry Ireland Introductions
Mentor, Irish Writers Centre / Dublin Book Festival Young Writer Delegates scheme
Mentor, Diversifying Irish Poetry: Poetry Critics of Colour in Ireland
Mentor, Ledbury Emerging Poetry Critics Scheme
Peer Reviewer: Liverpool University Press Modern Language Association (MLA) Studi irlandesi: A Journal of Irish Studies English Studies The Parish Review ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
Awards and Honours
Fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature
International Dylan Thomas Prize, shortlist
Rooney Prize for Irish Literature
The Laurel Prize
Maurice J Bric Medal of Excellence (Irish Research Council)
International Dylan Thomas Prize, longlist (Open, Heaven)
Spiegel Buchpreis (shortlist)
Micheal Déon Prize, shortlist
The Polari Book Prize, shortlist
An Post Book Awards, Biography of the Year, shortlist
RSL Ondaatje Prize, longlist
John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, shortlist
The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, shortlist
Foyles Book of the Year, Non-Fiction, Shortlist
Memberships
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature