Lucy Caldwell (born 1981) is a Northern Irish playwright and novelist. She was the winner of the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award and of the 2023 Walter Scott Prize.

Biography

She was born in Belfast in 1981 in what she later described as into "'one of the darkest and most turbulent years of the Troubles: the year the hunger strikes began, when within a few months Bobby Sands and nine others died; when things seemed to be spiralling irrevocably out of control.'" She studied at Strathearn School and later at Queens' College, Cambridge, graduating with a First-Class Degree, and Goldsmiths, University of London. Caldwell left the city she had always considered "boring, introverted" in 1999, but later declared: "yes, it's true: I do love this city, and I do love these streets, and I am proud to be from here."

Work

In June 2004, Caldwell's first short play, The River, was performed at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, and subsequently the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The play won her the PMA Most Promising Playwright Award. Caldwell spent time as writer-on-attachment to the National Theatre in 2005. Her first full-length play, Leaves, won the 2006 George Devine Award, the 2007 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the BBC Stewart Parker Award. In 2007 it was produced by the Druid Theatre Company, and directed by Garry Hynes. The play premiered in Galway before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre. Her second full-length play, Guardians, premiered at the 2009 HighTide Festival in Halesworth. Reviewing the production, critic Michael Billington wrote: "[Caldwell] writes with real power about lost love. I was much moved." Notes to Future Self was produced at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in March 2011, directed by Rachel Kavanaugh. It was described in The Stage as "Brave, beautiful, and quite extraordinary".

Radio plays

Caldwell's radio play, Girl from Mars, broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 2008, won the Irish Playwrights' and Screenwriters' Guild Award ("ZeBBie") for Best Radio Play and the BBC's Richard Imison Award for best script by a writer new to radio. In their verdict, the judges said:"'This is a gripping and powerful depiction of the effect on a family when one sibling goes missing. The beautifully-told story begins when a body is found and the remaining daughter returns to be with her family while they await identification. Girl From Mars is moving and emotionally taut. It veers away from sentimentality and felt personal and believable. The structure is complex – combining three different timescales – and uses radio to its full potential, using many techniques including voice-overs, dialogue, text messages, and voice mail. The story has a shades-of-grey resolution about the way a person's life can tragically stop short – and this is echoed in the subtle way the writer ends her own play too.'"

Novels, fiction

Caldwell's first novel, Where They Were Missed, set in Belfast and County Donegal, was published in February 2006 by Faber & Faber and short-listed for the 2006 Dylan Thomas Prize. It was described by Vogue as "a debut reminiscent of Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden and Trezza Azzopardi's The Hiding Place. Caldwell's second novel, The Meeting Point, centred on a young Irish missionary couple who journey to Bahrain, was published in February 2011. It was described by the Sunday Times as "Compelling, passionate and deeply resonant", and by The Guardian as "haunting... compulsively readable". In 2012, Caldwell was the recipient of a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Her novel, All the Beggars Riding, published in 2013, was shortlisted for both the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and the Fiction Uncovered selection and was chosen as Belfast's One City One Book. Caldwell won the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award for "All the People Were Mean and Bad". In 2022, Caldwell published These Days, a fictionalized account of the Belfast Blitz, revolving around the lives of two sisters. The book won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction in 2023.

Novels and plays

Novels

Stage plays

Radio plays

Awards and honours