Mary Branley has been a writer and facilitator with Kids’ Own since 2001. Most recently working with Kids’ Own Young Writers group on our book project Buoyant; An anthology of new voices from Donegal and Derry/Londonderry.  Other book projects include the 100-year history project (2015), The Transition Project (2014), supporting young children in the transition to primary school and Through the Eyes of Traveller Children (2014) with Traveller children from Dungarvan. In 2013, Rebellion in the Village, a collaboration between Mary and 11 and 12 year old Sligo school children was the first novel to be published by Kids’ Own.

Mary Branley is a poet, writer and musician based in north Sligo. She is the author of three collections of poetry: A Pinch of Snow in a Black Velvet Glove Lepus Print 2021 Martin, Let Me Go 2009, A Foot on the Tide, 2002 with Summer Palace Press. Her poetry has been included in such anthologies as Windharp: Poems of Ireland Since 1916, The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing and The Watchful Heart: A New Generation of Irish Poets: Poems and Essays, as well as translated into Catalan and Spanish. She was awarded the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in 2008 and she is the recipient of numerous residencies and bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland. Closely associated with Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership, a children’s arts organisation and publishing house, Mary has facilitated children’s writing for over twenty years and forty-five titles.

She was commissioned to write a libretto on the life of Countess Markievicz, Irish Revolutionary by Ukrainian composer Olesya Zdorovetska for a show premiering at the Cairde Festival Sligo in  7^th July 23.