Sophie Hillan
Sophie is a writer and critic, with a special interest in acting as mentor to new authors.
A writer of fiction herself, she has won several prizes for her work. She was short-listed for a Hennessy Award in 1981, and was runner-up to John Arden in the Royal Society of Literature’s first V.S,Pritchett Memorial Award in 1999. Her work is included in the 2005 Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories, edited by David Marcus.
Sophie was until 2003 a university lecturer, and has long experience of guiding writers of all ages through the process of preparing work for submission. She has written widely on the work of, among others, Seamus Heaney and Edna O’Brien, and her most recent critical article can be read in Wild Colonial Girl: Essays on Edna O’Brien, (University of Wisconsin Press).
Sophie’s belief is that the urge to write is just the beginning of the journey, quoting Seamus Heaney’s remark that what matters is "getting started, keeping going, and getting started again".
