Pauline Clooney is an award-winning writer and founder of the Kildare Writing Centre. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from UCD, an MLitt from NUIM with a thesis on Charlotte Brontë, and a diploma in Creative Writing for Publication from NUIM.
Her short fiction has received widespread recognition, most recently winning the 2024 Dingle Literary Festival Short Story Competition. She is a recipient of the Arts Council Agility Award and a former winner of the RTÉ Guide/Penguin Ireland Short Story Competition.
Her debut novel, Charlotte and Arthur (Merdog Books), a reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s Irish honeymoon, was published in 2021.

Writing Achievements include:
• 2024 Winner of the Inaugural Dingle Literary Festival Short Story Competition.
• 2024, awarded a residency on the Freedom to Write Project, a joint venture between the John Hewitt International Summer School and Irish Pen and the Department of Foreign Affairs.
• Arts Council Agility Award recipient, 2023.
• Author of Charlotte and Arthur, published by Merdog Press, ISBN: 978-1-9165016-7-6 This work of historical fiction is a reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s honeymoon in Ireland in 1854.
• Listowel Writer’s Week Cill Rialaig writer-in-residency 2022.
• Denis O Driscoll literary Award recipient for a professional writer from Kildare County Council Arts Services (2021).
• Runner up in the Irish Writer’s Centre Novel Fair, 2020.
• Date with an Agent recipient as part of the Dublin International Literature festival, 2019.
• Tyrone Guthrie Bursary awardee from Kildare County Council (2017, 2018).
• Penguin Ireland/ RTE Guide Short Story competition winner, 2015.
• Short Stories have been shortlisted and longlisted for numerous competitions including RTE Guide/Penguin Ireland Short Story competition (2014), the Doolin Short Story competition (2014). Allingham Flash Fiction Comp. (2019) QuietManDave (Manchester University School of Writing) flash fiction 2022, Mines Shine Bright competition, (Melbourne) 2023, Colm Tóibín Short Story Competition (2016), the Fish Short Memoir competition (2014), and the Fish Publishing International Short Story Prize (2015 and 2018).
• Short Stories are published online and in various anthologies including Come into the House: Tales of Secrets, History, and Mystery, Ireland’s Own Anthology of Short Stories, The RTE Guide, HCE Review, Arts and Literary Journal, Dingle Literary Festival Website.