Féilim James through English,
Féilim Ó Brádaigh through Irish

Féilim James, from Dublin, Ireland, is a writer of poetry, prose, and plays. He has been funded by the Arts Council of Ireland on three occasions, including for his debut novel, Flower of Ash. Dublin City Arts Office granted him an Arts Bursary in 2021 to finish his first poetry collection, I was a river, lost. Féilim’s work has appeared in the Irish Independent’s New Irish Writing, Acumen, Abridged, The High Window, The Fiction Pool, TOWER, Icarus, The Galway Review, A New Ulster, Trinity Journal of Literary Translation, Pendemic, Rant and Rave, Vox Galvia, and Tales From the Forest. He has had four plays and two short films produced. Smashing Times Centre for the Arts and Equality have performed, published, or exhibited 15 of Féilim’s poems, in locations such as Dublin Castle, the Mill Theatre Dundrum, on their website, and in their newsletter.

Féilim’s play Sole Flower, Spidered Soul (2023), about the turbulent relationship between the dancer Lucia Joyce and her writer father James, was performed five times in the Pumphouse, Dublin Port, in October 2023, as part of Smashing Times’ Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival. His play At Summer’s End (2019), about Ettie Steinberg, a real-life Jewish-Irish woman facing the horrors of the Holocaust, has been toured by Smashing Times to places such as Paris, Northern Ireland, and Áras an Uachtaráin, the residency of the President of Ireland.

Féilim’s Irish language writing, under the surname Ó Brádaigh, has won seven Oireachtas na Gaeilge awards, including one for a collection of poetry. These awards are the most prestigious in Irish language literature. His work through Irish has appeared in Comhar, Feasta, Trinity Journal of Literary Translation, Comhar Óg, Tuathal, and An Scríbhneoir Óg. Additionally, he has twice been selected for Fóras na Gaeilge’s Tutor Scheme, through which he developed his poetry and prose with the award-winning poet and children’s writer Áine Ní Ghlinn.

Féilim graduated from the BA in English Literature and Psychology in Trinity College, Dublin in 2017. In 2020, he received a first-class honour in NUI Galway’s MA in Writing, studying under the likes of Mike McCormack and Arnold Thomas Fanning. In addition to the works mentioned above, Féilim has written a short story collection titled Strangers and another novel, Adam.

Féilim’s themes are wide-ranging, and include identity, mental illness, transgression, guilt, human animalism, love, death, and nature, particularly its reflection of our inner worlds and the world in which we live. He is committed to maintaining an ever-evolving and progressive approach to his work, with each book both building on the last and differing in a vital way. In other words, the aforementioned themes will change as time passes, as will their stylistic rendering.

Féilim is currently seeking literary representation.

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Is scríbhneoir é Féilim Ó Brádaigh as Baile Átha Cliath, Éire. Scríbhneoir filíochta, drámaíochta, agus próis, sa Ghaeilge agus sa Bhéarla, foilsíodh a shaothair trí Ghaeilge in irisí éagsúla, leithéidí Comhar, Feasta, agus Tuathal. Foilsíodh aistriúcháin Ghaeilge dá chuid san iris Trinity Journal of Literary Translation. Ghnóthaigh saothar Fhéilim seacht nduais i gComórtais Liteartha an Oireachtais ó 2011-2016, ceann le haghaidh cnuasach filíochta dar teideal Bóthar an Chladaigh san áireamh. Roghnaíodh é faoi dhó le haghaidh Scéim na nOidí de chuid Fóras na Gaeilge, áit ar oibrigh sé leis an scríbhneoir clúiteach Áine Ní Ghlinn.

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Selection of Publications:

• Féilim’s poem ‘Dream of an Atrocity’ published in The Irish Independent’s New Irish Writing, January 2024. Read here.
• Féilim’s poem ‘Song for the Dispossessed’ published in Acumen, May 2022. Read here.
• Féilim’s essay ‘The Way of the Writer’ published in The High Window, Summer 2021. Read here.
• Féilim’s short story ‘David in the Rain’ published in The Fiction Pool, September 2019. Read here.
• Féilim’s poem ‘Tús’ published in the journal Comhar, August 2019.
• Féilim’s short story ‘Cogar’ published in the journal Comhar, January 2018. Read here.
• Féilim’s poems ‘The Ephemeral’ and ‘A View of Troy’ published in The Galway Review, December 2018. Read here.
• Three of Féilim’s short stories – ‘Dreamcatcher’, ‘A Warm November Day’, and ‘Getting Out’ – published in the literary journal A New Ulster, December 2017. Read here.
• Féilim’s poems ‘An Interrogation of the Semicolon’ and ‘The Man Who Realised He Was God’ published in the literary journal Icarus, May 2016. Read here and here.
• Féilim’s poem ‘Dead Fox’ published in Icarus, December 2015. Read here.

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