About

Finola Cahill is a pluri-disciplinary artist and award winning poet from Ballina, Co. Mayo. She has lived in Dublin, Italy, and Paris but returned to live in the west of Ireland in 2021.

Her accolades include winning the 2024 Single Poem Award at Listowel Writers Week and the 2023 Waterford Poetry Prize. She has also been highly commended and shortlisted for prizes in fiction and poetry, including the Bridport Prize, the Fish Poetry Prize, the Cheltenham Poetry Prize, The Máirtín Crawford Short Story Award, The Cúirt New Writing Prize, the Bath Short Story Prize, and others. You can find her work published in journals such as the London Magazine, and a full list of her publications can be found under the publications tab.

In 2023 Finola was one of twelve international poets selected to attend the Seamus Heaney Summer School, and one of 37 writers selected to participate in the Irish Writers Centre national mentoring programme. Her place in that programme was generously funded by the Mayo Arts Office. She is working towards her first collection and has been awarded an Arts Council Agility Award to that end.

Finola is also working on a longer work of fiction, which she workshopped at the Stinging Fly six-month fiction workshop 2023-2024.

In parallel to her fiction and poetry, Finola is a songwriter and musician, having toured and recorded with her band, Pembroke, and acted as a lyricist and song translator for other artists. Further details can be found under the Music tab.

While writing and music are her principal focus, Finola enjoys painting and photography. She has previously exhibited paintings at the People’s Art on Stephen’s Green Dublin, and also in Ballina Arts Centre. She was the creator and curator of The Atlas Project.