Lucy is the author of three novels and several stage plays & radio dramas. Her awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright, the BBC Stewart Parker Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, the Imison Award, a Fiction Uncovered Award and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Her most recent novel, All the Beggars Riding, was chosen for Belfast’s One City One Book campaign in 2013 and shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. Her debut play, Leaves, premiered at Druid Theatre’s Chapel Lane and the Royal Court Upstairs in 2007. Subsequent plays include Guardians and Notes to Future Self, and she has just worked on a version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters set in 1990s Belfast for the Lyric Theatre.
Lucy adds:
'I decided I wanted to be a writer aged 13 when, for homework, we had to write an extra chapter for Jennifer Johnson’s novel How Many Miles to Babylon? I spent hours on it, and I knew I’d found my calling. I was entranced by the workshop I observed at Fighting Words. The room itself with its beautiful rooftop view, flooded with light. The boundless enthusiasm of the workshop leaders and volunteers. The wild excitement and glee of the schoolchildren, quietening to a hum of intense concentration as they got to work imagining their worlds and stories and characters into being. It takes so little for the spark to be ignited, and it can illuminate a whole life. I am proud and honoured to be a Patron of Fighting Words Belfast. If it had been there when I was growing up, I’d never have left. This is the next best thing.'
