RUTH GILLIGAN

Ruth Gilligan is a writer and academic from Dublin now based in the UK. She has published five books to date and was the youngest person ever to top the Irish Bestsellers’ List.

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Her most recent novel,The Butchers, (published as The Butchers' Blessing in the US) is a literary thriller set in the Irish borderlands; it won the 2021 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, awarded to the book that best evokes the 'spirit of a place'.

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Ruth holds degrees from Cambridge, Yale, UEA and Exeter. She contributes literary reviews to the Irish Independent, Guardian, TLS and LA Review of Books. She works as a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham and is an ambassador for the global storytelling charity Narrative 4.

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