Kelly McCaughrain

Kelly McCaughrain (2019-21)
Kelly McCaughrain is a Young Adult writer from Belfast. She studied Creative Writing at Queen’s and mentors young writers at Fighting Words. Her first novel, Flying Tips for Flightless Birds, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal, and won the Children's Books Ireland Eilis Dillon Award, Children's Choice Award and Book of the Year Award 2019, and also won the Northern Ireland Book Award 2019.
Kelly's main objective with the Fellowship has been to address the increasing lack of opportunities to be creative in young people’s academic lives, and encourage schools to set up creative writing groups.
She has set up a website called The Blank Page to share her own experience, advice, tips and tricks with teachers and librarians running creative writing groups in post-primary schools. She has also put together resource packs to help new groups get started, with books on writing craft, Flash Fiction prompt books, Postcard-story kits, pencils and notebooks.
Speaking of the Fellowship, Kellly said;
''I’m thrilled with the response to the project, and its reach. There are now many new writing groups being set up all over Northern Ireland. These will hopefully still be running long after my term, and the website can continue to be used by schools in years to come. I was also pleased to receive messages from schools in England and Wales who are using the website for their creative writing groups, which was an unexpected bonus.
Thanks to the Fellowship award I’ve been able to offer the schools free author visits for their creative writing groups, and I hope to be visiting several schools this term to meet their young writers.''
Kelly has spoken about her schools project at various schools and libraries, and events including the Belfast Harbour Commissioner’s Teenage Author event with BookTrust, the Kids Lit Quiz at Wellington College, and a forthcoming panel with Children's Books Ireland. In April 2020, Kelly will be on a panel with the UK Children’s Laureate, Cressida Cowell.
Alongside all this, she has been judging BBC Radio’s Two Minute Tales competition for 5-13 year old writers, and the Caterpillar’s Short Story Competition. She has been working with Belfast Met’s supported learning classes to help their teens with special needs engage with books and the library.
Kelly was one of the writers who invited us into their writing room during the lockdown of Spring/Summer 2020. For more insights, have a look in our Writers' Rooms...
Kelly McCaughrain's debut novel for young adults is now available as an audiobook.
Listen now!

Every day is World Book Day...
Read an interview with Kelly McCaughrain ahead of World Book Day 2020.