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The Seamus Heaney Centre

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    • The Heaney Community
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    • Collections at the Seamus Heaney Centre
  • Our People
    • The SHC Fellows
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    • Fulbright Scholars
    • Children's Writing Fellow
    • Visiting International Poetry Fellows
    • Ireland Chair of Poetry
  • Study
    • The Poetry Summer School
    • Student Showcases and Opportunities
    • Writing Groups
    • New Students...
    • SHC X Fighting Words
    • Hear from Alumni
  • First Collection Poetry Prize
    • Poetry Prize 2025
    • Poetry Prize 2024
    • Poetry Prize 2023
    • Poetry Prize 2022
    • Poetry Prize 2021
    • Poetry Prize 2020
  • Resources
    • The SHC Podcast
    • SHC Publications
    • Criticism & Ideas on Writing
    • Films & Virtual Events
    • Writers' Interviews
    • Tiny Masterclasses
  • News
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    • SHC Presents...
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    • Conferences
    • Reading Seamus Heaney
    • Translation
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Featured Alumni

Our graduates go on to do wonderful things. Their films are never off our screens, their plays never off our stages; they're constantly publishing books, editing journals, hosting conferences, winning awards, teaching, talking, and most importantly, making space for writing in their lives. 

Read about some of our graduates and their writing lives here...

Emily DeDakis

Emily grew up in the Southeast US. She studied literature and history at Tulane University in New Orleans, and moved to Belfast in 2005. Emily completed her MA in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre, before achieving the first PhD in creative writing in Ireland.

Emily is dramaturg and producer for Accidental Theatre, and Project Coordinator at Fighting Words Belfast. She is a scriptreader for New Writing South (Brighton), dramaturgy facilitator for FURYfactory Festival of Ensemble & Devised Theater (San Francisco), and recipient of two dramaturgy fellowships from the BBC Performing Arts Fund. 


Caitlin Newby

Caitlin Newby received her BA from Vassar College and her MA (Poetry) and PhD (Creative Writing) from Queen’s University, Belfast. She has poems and translations published in Ambit, gorse, Poetry Ireland Review, and The White Review. In 2018 she was shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize and in 2019 was named the inaugural Bookfinders Chair in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre. She is also the poetry editor of The Tangerine, a magazine of new writing based in Belfast.

Read Caitlin's Writers' Rooms interview here...


Michael J. Daly

Michael J. Daly is currently on a sabbatical from his medical career to undertake an MA in Creative Writing, focussing on drama. To date, Michael has written and produced four short-films with Bosco Production, his own production company: Good Boy (2015), Mother’s Milk and Cookies (2016), Dam (2017) and Forgive Me Not (2019). His first full-length stage-play Pink Carnations is currently in development, and he is now writing his second: Amen.


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Seamus Heaney Centre
38-40 University Road, Belfast
BT7 1NN

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Phone: 028 9097 1077
Email: shc@qub.ac.uk 

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