SF / NI : Sci-Fi Panel

Led by Seamus Heaney Centre lecturer Sam Thompson, we invite you to come and listen to special guests Ian MacDonald and R.B. Kelly. Our guests will discuss their inspirations, read favourite passages and answer your burning questions on all things writing science/speculative fiction.

Sam Thompson is a novelist, and lecturer in Creative Writing at The Seamus Heaney Centre. He is the author of the novels Communion Town and Jott, the children’s novels Wolfstongue, The Fox’s Tower and The Forest Yet to Come, and the story collection Whirlwind Romance. His work has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Edge Hill Prize and a British Science Fiction Association Award, has been shortlisted for the Encore Prize, has won a Spark School Book Award and a Literacy Association of Ireland Biennial Book Award, and has been chosen as an Outstanding International Book by the US Board on Books for Young People.

RB Kelly's debut novel, Edge of Heaven, was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award. The sequel, On The Brink, followed in 2022, and her first short story collection will be published in 2026. Her work can be found in publications from around the world, including The Best of British Science Fiction, ParSec, Factor Four, and Lamplight Magazine. She lives just outside Belfast with her husband, two children, and a very lazy cat.

Ian McDonald is a (mostly) SFF writer living in Holywood in Co Down. He was born in Manchester in 1960 (his mum was from Northern Ireland) but came over with the family in 1965 and hasn't left. His forest story was published in the short lived but glossy Belfast SF magazine Extro in 1983 and his first novel Desolation Road came out in 1988 and was a Locus Award winner for best first novel of that year. He's written steadily ever since, and also worked for several years in television in a development role for various Northern Ireland indies in factual, animation and children's television. (He was part of the team that brought the Muppets to Northern Ireland). He's won the Hugo, Philip K Dick and Campbell Memorial awards and has been nominated for many more. Most recent book is eco-folk horror The Wilding (Gollancz, 2024); forthcoming books include Boy, with Accidental Dinosaur (Tor,com, Feb 2026), much of which was his Creative Writing MA dissertation in 2024, and Once Upon a Time on the Moon, a prequel to the Luna series. (TBA). He has three cats. Pray for him.

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