Felicity McCall

A BBC staff journalist for twenty years based in Northern Ireland during the Conflict, Felicity McCall is a writer and broadcaster. As a late-career writer, she was appointed to be the inaugural RLF Fellow at the Magee Campus of the University of Ulster. She is proud to see the North West of Northern Ireland recognised by the RLF as a significant and growing seat of academic learning. This work inspired her to develop a second short-story collection. McCall has more than twenty published titles, thirteen plays staged professionally and four screenplay credits.  Genres include young adult fiction, literary fiction, short stories and memoir for Little Island, Guildhall Press, Penguin and Blackstaff.

She has ghostwritten four (auto) biographies, the most successful of which was generously acknowledged. Her theatre life saw her founding and running three professional touring companies and acting for stage and film, as well as co-founding the multi-disciplinary group, Literary Ladies. Career awards include the Tyrone Guthrie for stage and screenplay, eight Arts Council individual awards, The Big Lottery Fund UK Winner for History, three Epic (community arts) awards, two Meyer Whitworth nominations, and two Irish theatre awards. A professional member of the Irish Writers Centre, she mentors and facilitates individuals and groups. She is active in a number of writing groups and a key figure in the vibrant Arts scene in the North West of Ireland. She contributes to regional and local radio and television.

A lifelong trade unionist, she has been the first woman co-chair of the Irish Executive of the National Union of Journalists, is Branch Grievance Officer, active in Derry Trades Council and is a governor of Oakgrove Integrated College in Derry. Defining herself as an artist/activist, she has been privileged to work with miscarriages of justice, trauma and abuse survivors and aspires through her writing to give a voice to the voiceless. Most recently she has worked in this capacity with the Ambassadors for Peace project based at Derry’s Playhouse. Felicity lives in Derry and Donegal, where she walks and writes by the shore, aims to become increasingly fluent in Irish, to live a healthy and sustainable lifestyle and enjoys being an Irish Mammy and Mamo (Granny).