Laura McKenna, from Waterfall in Cork, has a Masters in Creative Writing from UCD. In 2012 she won the RTE Guide/Penguin short story prize, and was a runner-up in the William Trevor/Elizabeth Bowen short story competition. Her poetry won the Edmund Spenser Poetry Prize in 2011, was shortlisted in the 2012 Fish Poetry competition and has been published in New Irish Writing in the Sunday Independent, and in The SHOp this year. Her novel Forfeit – set in Serbia during WW1 - was a winner in the 2013 Novel Fair competition at the Irish Writers Centre. She was awarded a Literature Bursary by the Arts Council in 2012.