Emma Cummins Festival Associate – Belfast Book Festival 2026

Emma Cummins is an Associate for Belfast Book Festival 2025. She is the former manager of the Guardian Bookshop, and previously worked for Guardian Masterclasses as a programmer and copywriter.

Emma's essays and reviews have been published in The Quietus, The Guardian, Open Democracy, Flash Art International and Aesthetica. She was shortlisted for the Fish Short Memoir Prize 2021.

Emma writes fiction and has read her work at events with the Seamus Heaney Centre and the John Hewitt International Summer School. She is currently developing a series of short stories, for which she was awarded The Tyrone Guthrie Centre Bursary 2025–26, funded by Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council and the Island Arts Centre.

Her fiction explores growing up in Northern Ireland, moving “over the water” to England, and returning home. Emma is from Hillsborough, Co. Down and lives in South Belfast.