Caoilinn Hughes is an Irish writer whose novels include The Alternatives, which was nominated for the Irish Book Awards and was a New York Times Editor's Pick, The Wild Laughter, which won the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award, and Orchid & The Wasp.
Her short stories have been awarded an O.Henry Prize, the Moth International Short Story Prize, and the Irish Book Awards' Story of the Year 2020. She was a Cullman Center Fellow at New York Public Library for 2023-2024.
At MacDowell, Hughes completed copyedits to her third novel, The Alternatives (Riverhead 2024), and drafted an original stage play.