BRIAN LEYDEN’s books include The Home Place, Sweet Old World: New and Selected Stories and Summer of ’63. He co-wrote the feature film, Black Ice, which premiered at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2013 and received an IFTA Best Actress nomination. He is a recipient of a Norman Mailer Writers Colony Scholarship (USA) and many residencies within Ireland. Most recently he received an Arts Council of Ireland Bursary in Literature (2022). Also a Covid-19 Response Award (2020), Hawk’s Well Theatre: Come Together (Writers and Composers, 2020), Hawk’s Well Theatre: People’s Poem: (2020) SLR Film Project Award (2018) with Atlantic Light Productions for script development for Summer of ’63. Creative Ireland Award (2018) script commission for the “Famine Attic” Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim. “Walking Birds’ Mountain” – Creative Ireland, Sligo and the Factory Theatre multi-media collaborative project (2018/2019). His new essay ‘The Heron and the Hare’ appears in Winter Papers 8, ed Kevin Barry & Olive Smith (Curlew Editions, 2022). He lives in Sligo.