Ciaran Carson

Ciaran Carson was born in Belfast and was educated at Queen's University. He is the author of nine collections of poems, including The Irish for No, Belfast Confetti, winner of the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Poetry in 1990, First Language: Poems, winner of the 1993 T. S. Eliot Prize, and Breaking News, winner of the Forward Poetry Prize 2003. Carson has also written four prose books: Last Night's Fun, a book about traditional music; The Star Factory, a memoir of Belfast; Fishing for Amber: A Long Story; and Shamrock Tea, a novel, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Ciaran Carson is the director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University, Belfast.