Brian Conaghan

Brian Conaghan is an award-winning author of ten young adult and middle-grade novels, which have been published in a variety of languages. His work is primarily focussed on the lives and relationships of working-class teens, and those characters who live within the margins of society. His 2014 book, When Mr Dog Bites (Bloomsbury 2014) was shortlisted for the Carnegie medal, while his book, The Bombs That Brought Us Together (Bloomsbury 2016) won the Costa Children’s Book award. The Weight of a Thousand Feathers (Bloomsbury 2018) won the An Post Irish Teen and Young Adult Book of the Year as well as the Children’s Books Ireland Honour award. His forthcoming novels include Swimming on the Moon (Bloomsbury 2023) and Treacle Town (Andersen Press 2023).

Brian is also a screenwriter and at present has four projects in development for film and television. Two of these projects are modern interpretations of The Great Gatsby and Dangerous Liaisons respectively. Moreover, he is adapting his novel, When Mr Dog Bites, for an eight-part television series and also has a police procedural show in the pipeline. Brian makes regular school, festival and community group visits where he gives talks and creative writing workshops, among other things, to a range of age groups.

Before becoming a full-time writer, Brian worked as an English, Theatre Studies and Classics secondary school teacher where he taught in Scotland, Italy and Ireland. After twenty-one years of work/travel, Brian currently lives back in his hometown of Coatbridge.