Cara Loftus is an IFTA nominated screenwriter and a Screen International Rising Star 2025 who has been listed as One to Watch by The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. Her debut feature film SPILT MILK had its Irish premiere at Dublin Film Festival where Cara won the DIFF Discovery Award, and its UK premiere at Glasgow Film Festival where it won the Mubi Audience Award. Spilt Milk was nominated for four IFTA’s including Best Script and Best Film. The screenplay was selected for the inaugural New Writing Scheme (now Spotlight) with Screen Ireland in 2019. For television Cara has written on the upcoming third season of HIDDEN ASSETS and second season of THE HARDACRES.

Waterford songwriter Tadhg WIlliams has become known for his honest and challenging lyricism, looking into the past to grasp the present. His debut EP, 'This Record is a Nixer', navigates the angers and frustrations of being a twenty-something-year-old in Ireland today, through his understanding of history. It was met with critical acclaim upon its release, with many of the tracks noted as Songs of the Year among critics, contemporaries and fans alike. Having earned slots alongside acts such as Kingfishr, The Coronas and Niamh Regan, Tadhg has become known for his "amazing and profoundly personal” live shows.   While Tadhg takes inspiration from the likes of The War on Drugs, The Waterboys, Sam Fender and Damien Dempsey, ‘This Record is a Nixer’ proved that a good song should sound as good stripped back, as it does with a live band. He is currently working on his debut album.

Adiba Jaigirdar is an award-winning, critically acclaimed, and bestselling author. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she has been living in Dublin, Ireland from the age of ten. She has a BA in English and History from University College Dublin, and an MA in Postcolonial Studies from the University of Kent. She writes across young adult, middle grade, and adult fiction and non-fiction. Her seminal works include The Henna Wars, which was selected as one of Time Magazine’s best YA books of all time, and Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, which was the winner of the YA Book Prize. She has been featured in Buzzfeed, Autostraddle, Teen Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and The Guardian. When not writing, she is probably drinking many cups of tea, playing video games, or expanding her overflowing lipstick collection.

Derek Landy is an Irish writer and screenwriter. In addition to the bestselling children's/YA series of Skulduggery Pleasant books, a supernatural mystery series starring Skulduggery Pleasant, a skeleton detective, and Valkyrie Cain, a young female magician, he has written two screenplays that have been made into films: the IFTA award winning "Dead Bodies" and the IFTA nominated "Boy Eats Girl". Landy himself was nominated for an IFTA for Best Script.

He doesn’t like to brag about all the awards he’s won, such as the Irish Book of the Decade, or the Red House in the UK, or all the other awards that he humbly displays on his mantelpiece. He is also far too modest to mention things like the first book being a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year, but would like to extend an invitation to Oprah to pop around one day for tea, in thanks for selecting his book for the Oprah’s Book Club Kids Reading List.

Derek plays too many video games, reads too many comics, and watches too many movies. He lives in Ireland with too many cats. Occasionally he talks to real people, but only when he absolutely has to.

Molly Twomey grew up in Lismore, County Waterford, and now lives in Cork. Her debut poetry collection, Raised Among Vultures, was published in 2022 by The Gallery Press. It won the Southword Debut Collection Poetry Award and was shortlisted for both The Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for a First Collection, and The Farmgate Café National Poetry Award. She was awarded the 2023 Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary and an Arts Council Literature Bursary in 2024 to work on her second collection, Chic to be Sad, published in 2025 by The Gallery Press. Twomey runs an online international poetry event, Just to Say, sponsored by Jacar Press. She holds an MA in Creative Writing and is currently a PhD candidate at University College Cork.

Meg Grehan is the author of five novels-in-verse for young readers, they are The Space Between, The Deepest Breath, Baby Teeth, The Lonely Book and The Brightest Star. Her books have won two Children’s Books Ireland Awards and been nominated for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, An Post Irish Book Awards and the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing. She lives in County Donegal where she spends too much time reading poetry and hugging trees.

Maura (Momo) Willet is an animator and illustrator with a Master’s Degree from the Bristol School of Animation. Her work explores storytelling through movement, character, and play. She is passionate about creative writing, illustrating for children’s books, and sometimes making stories move – both literally and emotionally.

Momo is passionate about helping others discover the creative possibilities of animation – especially in its simplest, most hands-on form. Momo believes animation is invisible storytelling and is everywhere if you know where to look.