Ciaran MacGonigal
is currently Director of the Hunt Museum; was formerly Director of the RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin. He is, inter alia, a member of the Board of Governors and Guardians of the National Gallery of Ireland and was formerly art critic with The Irish Times and The Irish Independent.

Sinéad Blanchfield
born in Kilkenny, Sinead has a B.A. (Hons) in Music and a postgraduate Dip.Ed from TCD. She continued her vocal training at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and graduated with the conservatoires highest award in performance -the PPRNCM Diploma. She performed extensively on the concert and opera platform here and in the UK including the Oratorio and Recital repertoire and has recorded for TV and Radio. Her next engagement is a concert series with OTC and the London Baroque Sinfonia.

James Heaney
has a BA and an MA in English and Philosophy from Maynooth, and at present is doing his PhD in TCD, 'Comparative study of Modern Irish and Spanish Writing'. He lectures at the Mater Dei Institute of Education in Clonliffe Road, Dublin.

Derek Cahill
has a BA in History and Politics from UCD. He taught at Sierra Leone, West Africa for two years and in Algeria for a year; more recently has spent a year teaching in the University of Bratislava in Slovakia.

Redmond O'Hanlon
teaches Drama at UCD, has been published internationally on theatre and the novel. Organises an annual Dionysus Colloquiun Montpelier in the South of France.

Lelia Doolan
has worked in theatre, television, film and journalism RTE, the Abbey Theatre, The Irish Press and other newspapers and publications. She has lived and worked in Dublin, Belfast and Mayo and moved to south Galway some years ago where she now freelances as a writer, teacher, film-maker, gardener and homeopath. She was until recently Chair of Bord Scannan na hEireann, The Irish Film Board.

Eoin Devereux
a Limerick born Media Sociologist, Eoin Devereux was educated at NUI Galway and DCU. He has worked as a researcher on RTE Radio and as a regular commentator on Network 2's Later with John Kelly. He has published Devils and Angels: Television, Ideology and the Coverage of Poverty (1998) and has edited a collection of Seamus O'Cinneide's journalism entitled Last Word by The Listener (1999). He lectures in sociology at University of Limerick.

Victoria Glendinning
Award-winning biographer of Trollope, Elizabeth Bowen, Vita Sackville-West, Edith Sitwell, Rebecca West and most recently Jonathan Swift, Victoria Glendinning is also a literary critic, broadcaster and writer on travel and gardening as well as the author of two novels, The Grown Ups and Electricity. She has four sons and lives in London and in West Cork.