Ruth Gilligan, Professor of Creative Writing, University of Birmingham (UK)

Ruth Gilligan is an Irish-born novelist and professor of creative writing at the University of Birmingham (UK). Her fourth novel, Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan is based around the history of the Jewish community in Ireland, and was recently published by Atlantic Books and Tin House to much acclaim.

At the start of the twentieth century, a young girl and her family emigrate from Europe in search of a better life in America, only to pitch up in Ireland by mistake. In 1958, a mute boy locked away in a mental institution outside Dublin forms an unlikely friendship with a man consumed by the story of the love he lost nearly two decades earlier. And in present-day London, an Irish journalist is forced to confront her conflicting notions of identity and family when her Jewish boyfriend asks her to make a true leap of faith. Spanning generations and braiding together three unforgettable voices, Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan shows us what it means to belong, and how storytelling can redeem us all.