2026 - Jan Carson
Jan Carson is a Belfast based writer who has published four novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland, 2019. The Raptures was shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her writing has aired on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and RTE and has been translated into twenty languages worldwide. She was one of the notable international guests at the Passa Porta Festival 2025.
Jan was the Seamus Heaney Centre Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast in 2025 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has also achieved the rank of Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. Her first stage play, an adaptation of the children’s classic, The Velveteen Rabbit was produced by Replay Theatre Company at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast in March 2025. Her latest novel, Few and Far Between was published by Doubleday in April 2026.
During her residency at Passa Porta in October 2026, she will be working on her next novel, provisionally titled Do You Remember When We Used to Sing?, which explores the theme of generational trauma in Northern Ireland. We also invited her to give an English-language masterclass on ‘How to create memorable characters’ at Passa Porta on 12 October (fully booked).