For only in praising is my heart still mine,

so violently do I know the world....

-Rainer Maria Rilke

My aspiration as an literary artist and musician is to render a thing faithfully, to hold a perception steady long enough to get its shape right, and to attend to both the devotion and danger of the holding.

I return again and again to the question of what it is like to be someone else, how another consciousness works, what happens when I enter a world that isn’t mine.

My work explores landscapes that are ecologically fragile, morally unsettled and volatile. I’m particularly interested in institutional landscapes such as prisons and psychiatric hospitals, and, differently, in islands and remote villages, where human beings are decentred by scale and distance.

Contact Details:

I’m no longer on social media; you can catch me by email: srbyrne@gmail.com

Writer Awards & Residencies

• Literature Bursary, The Arts Council of Ireland (2026)
• Swerve Writer-in-Residence (2025)
• Design & Craft Council of Ireland Award (2023)
• Literature Bursary, The Arts Council of Ireland (2022)
• UNESCO Dublin Writer Award (2022)
• Digital Writer-in-Residence, West Cork Literary Festival (2021)
• Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation Writer Award (2021)
• UNESCO Dublin Award for Poetry Day in Prisons (2019)
• Literature Bursary, The Arts Council of Ireland (2016)
• Tyrone Guthrie Residency, Cork County Council (2016 & 2017)
• Travel & Training Award, The Arts Council of Ireland (2016)
• 2nd Prize, Fish Poetry Competition (2016)
• Individual Artists Bursary Award, Cork City Council (2015).
• 1st Prize, Doolin Poetry Competition (2015)

Publisher Awards (as founder and editor of The Well Review)

• Literature Capacity Building Support, The Arts Council of Ireland (2021)
• Arts Grant Funding Literature, The Arts Council of Ireland (2018, 2020, 2021)
• Arts Grant Funding, Cork County Council (2019)

Education

• Master of Studies in Creative Writing: University of Oxford (2017)
• Master of Philosophy in Criminology: University of Cambridge (2008)
• Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and German (Specialisation: Criminology): Trinity College Dublin (2007)

I’ve also completed extensive professional training in forensic medicine, mental health counselling, independent mental health advocacy, arts administration and am a certified restorative justice mediator.