Ruth Gilligan is a writer and academic from Dublin now based in the UK. She has published five novels to date and was the youngest person ever to top the Irish Bestsellers’ List.
Her most recent novel,The Butchers 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', as well as the 2024 Prix des Lecteurs at the Festival Littératures Européennes.
Ruth holds degrees from Cambridge, Yale, UEA and Exeter and now works at the University of Birmingham as their first ever Professor of Creative Writing. She contributes regular literary reviews to the Guardian and Irish Independent, and partners with national and internationl charities such as Empathy Museum, National Literacy Trust and Narrative 4.
She is a McDowell fellow and a Hawthornden fellow; most recently she has been artist-in-reidence at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris (2025) and the Université Grenoble Alpes (2026). She has also begun writing for the stage - her first play We Love & Then We Drown will enjoy a two-week run at the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Credit: Paul Musso / Hay Festival 2019
