Fiona O'Rourke writes fiction, autofiction, and creative nonfiction. She reads at open mics and has performed to an audience of 180 at the Dublin Story Slam. Currently she is querying Bullet Points, an autofiction.
She was guest subeditor and contributor for The Storms Journal Issue IV, and the Organiser/MC for Open Mic fundraisers during March, April, and September 2024 and througout 2025 online and in person.
She was invited to contribute to the inaugural Kalpakṣētra / কল্পক্ষেত্র, a bi-lingual journal launching at Kolkata International Book Fair 2026. Her creative nonfiction was selected for the Southword Journal47. Other recent stories were included in The Belfast Review,Shorter Stories Ireland, Eat The Storms Podcast,Fortnight Magazine,The Storms Journal II, and The Waxed Lemon. She is a Pushcart Prize Nominee for Driving Lessons published in the Storms Journal II.
Other work has been broadcast on RTE Francis MacManus, translated in Troquel Revista de Letras, and published in literary journals including The Lonely Crowd, Sonder, Books Ireland Magazine, The Broken Spiral, The Fish Anthology, and more. She was a finalist in the inaugural Cairde Short Story Award judged by Louise Kennedy and Sinéad Gleeson, with a story from Palestine Street.
Her first published work, Wrong Whiskey, was a prize winner at the Fish International Short Story Award. It was included on a reading list for students at Saint Mary's College, California. Fiona was guest reader and speaker at a seminar on Wrong Whiskey for a module that Saint Mary’s undergrads studied in Ireland.
Fiona is a first generation university graduate. She moved to Dublin when selected by portfolio (without holding a traditional degree) to study for a Masters in Philosophy in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin. Studying under Professors Deirdre Madden, Gerald Dawe, Paula Meehan, Jonathan Williams, and visiting authors Richard Ford, Siobhán Parkinson, and Julian Gough, she graduated with a distinction in 2015.
Since then, she was selected for the 2016 Irish Novel Fair with Have You Found Luke? In 2017, she won a place on the inaugural XBorders project with the Irish Writers Centre and Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and was awarded an Irish Writers Centre Cill Rialaig writer-in-residence.
Fiona has designed and facilitated creative writing courses and programmes at Trinity College Dublin Innovation Academy, public libraries, festivals, in the community, and at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin.
She proposed, curated, and is the facilitator for Island of Many Voices, a new collaboration between The Linen Hall Belfast and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature in February and March 2026.
In Spring and Autumn 2025, she designed and facilitated Writing the Troubles for the Irish Writers Centre. She was the programmer & facilitator of Northern Soul Roadshow 2023-24 featuring a variety of guest authors including Man Booker winning author Anna Burns (Milkman) from Belfast. She ran this programme for the Irish Writers Centre with support from Arts Council Northern Ireland Lottery funding. Northern Soul Roadshow readings and an interview with Fiona are included in an Eat The Storms podcast.
In 2023, she was the facilitator & coordinator of Writing The Earth, an Irish Writers Centre and iCRAG collaboration for writers and scientists, which produced a showcase of new climate-focused writing and plays hosted by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature at Pearse Street Library. Writing The Earth has been developed into Writing Place Writing Planet, and she has been invited to be the facilitator of this programme in 2026.
Hi Fiona hope all is good.
It was lovely to catch up on Friday night.
Hope your online course went OK on Saturday morning.
Margaret