Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin: ‘Ordinary Saints’

Who gets to decide how we are remembered, and who we will become? Drawing from her own experience growing up in a devout Catholic household in Ireland, Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin asks these same questions in her sparkling début novel, ‘Ordinary Saints’. This award-winning novel has received huge praise for its sensitive and compelling treatment of queerness, grief, humour, family, and the Catholic church in contemporary Ireland. Join us in welcoming Niamh in conversation with our chair, Benjamin Bateman, as they explore identity, belief and human connection in her fiction.

Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin

Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin is an Irish writer living and working in Edinburgh. Her stories, essays and articles have appeared in Gutter, The New Statesman, The Millions, Sexualities and other publications. She was the winner of the inaugural PFD Queer Fiction Prize and was also shortlisted for the Women's Prize Trust Discoveries Prize in 2022 and the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2025. Her début literary novel, ‘Ordinary Saints’, was selected as a Radio 2 Bookclub Pick for 2025.

Chair: Benjamin Bateman 

Benjamin Bateman is Senior Lecturer in Post-1900 British Literature at The University of Edinburgh, where he also serves as Director of Learning and Teaching for the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures. He is the author of two monographs, ‘The Modernist Art of Queer Survival’ and ‘Queer Disappearance in Modern and Contemporary Fiction’. For six years, he served as the lead judge for The James Tait Black Prize in Fiction. 

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