Martin McDonagh is a Tony- and Oscar-winning scriptwriter whose first play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane. won multiple awards including four Tonys and the Laurence Olivier Award. He has gone on to write many smash-hit shows and films, winning an Academy Award for Live Action Short Film for Six Shooter (2005), an Oscar nomination, a British Independent Film Award for best screenplay, an Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild Award for Best Film Script, and a BAFTA for best original screenplay, all for In Bruges, and a Laurence Olivier award for Best New Play for The Pillowman (2004).
P.J. Mathews is a Senior Lecturer in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin, and has written widely on Irish literature and theatre. He is the author of Revival (Field Day, 2003); editor of The Cambridge Companion to John Millington Synge (CUP, 2009); and co-editor (with Declan Kiberd) of Handbook of the Irish Revival (Abbey Theatre Press, 2015). He is Director of Academic Podcasting for UCDscholarcast (www.ucd.ie/scholarcast).
