Annemarie Ní Churreáin

[The Poison Glen] speaks of dislocation and loss, of pain and attachment, in a poetry of furious energy and stunning verse-craft…. this Donegal poet is fully conscious of the redemptive nature of poetry, of the saving power that is such a part of its beauty. It is a stunning, central part of her wonderful art that, after pain, she would have us “make a bowl / spilling yellow corn-light”. What a gift Annemarie Ní Churreáin is to contemporary Irish poetry, what an absolute gift to this nation from Donegal.

— Thomas McCarthy, Dublin Review of Books

Photograph of Annemarie Ni Churreáin sitting in a dimly lit library with an open book in her hands. Photograph by Barry McCall

Annemarie Ní Churreáin is a poet from the Donegal Gaeltacht. Her books include Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017), Town (The Salvage Press, 2018) The Poison Glen (The Gallery Press, 2021 and Ghostgirl (Donegal Archives, 2023). Hymn to All the Restless Girls was published in 2025. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Shine Strong Award for Best Debut Collection (US) and for the Ledbury Hellens Poetry Prize for Best Second Collection (UK) and, most recently, the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award. She has received the Irish Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award, The Markievicz Award, The Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship and a Hawthornden Foundation Residency Award (NYC). Ní Churreáin is a former literary fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude (GR).

As a librettist Ní Churreáin co-created the text for Elsewhere — the critically acclaimed debut opera of Straymaker (IRE) in co-production with the Abbey National Theatre of Ireland. She is a co-librettist of The Curing Line — a new Straymaker opera which is due to tour worldwide in 2026. It has been awarded the Fedora Prize, the biggest opera prize in the world. Ní Churreáin has served as a Culture Night Read Mór Ambassador for Literature in the Irish Prison Service.

She is an active member of the Irish Writers in Prisons Scheme administered by the Irish Arts Council and a former Read Mór Culture Night Ambassador for Literature in Prisons. A co-founder of the Solas Writers Residency in north west Donegal she is currently developing a centre for native Irish Arts and land-based learning named Coláiste Shíle.

Ní Churreáin is Irish Writer Fellow in Residence at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana for the academic year 2026-27, and Yeats Society Sligo Poet in Residence 2026-28. She is the poetry editor at The Stinging Fly Magazine.