Fiona McPhillips is a journalist, author and screenwriter. Her debut novel, When We Were Silent, which was runner-up for the 2021 CWA Debut Dagger Award, was pre-empted by Transworld (Penguin) in the UK and Flatiron (Macmillan) in the US and will be published in May 2024.
Her prose has been published in The Manchester Review, Barren, Litro and elsewhere and her poetry has appeared in Atrium, Headstuff and The Galway Review. Her screenplay Windmills was a finalist at the 2020 New Renaissance Film Festival in London and the Waterford Film Festival. She is the recipient of a 2021 Arts Council literature bursary.
Fiona started her writing life in music, then jumped to sport. With children came a freelance career, and she wrote features for The Irish Times, The Irish Independent, The Herald, The Huffington post and other publications. She’d always talked about writing a novel… one day. In 2019, it was time to piss or get off the pot and she did an MA in Creative Writing at DCU, graduating with first class honours.
She is an editor at the wonderful Forge literary magazine.
Fiona is represented by Rachel Neely at Mushens Entertainment.