Olivia Fitzsimons is from Northern Ireland but now lives in Wicklow. Her debut novel The Quiet Whispers Never Stop will be published by John Murray in April 2022.
Olivia was an Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair Winner 2020. In the same year she was awarded an Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon Literature Bursary and a Professional Development Award for mentorship with Kit De Waal. She was also a recipient of the Support for Individual Artist Programme Award from Arts Council of Northern Ireland from their lottery funded General Arts Award Scheme.
Hell's Kitchen Ltd, are developing her feature film screenplay, 'THE FREQUENCY OF LIFE' and short 'LESLEY AGUS FIONN', with funding from MEDIA Europe. She has a passion for book to screen adaptation and works in development for Greenhorn Films. She is co-writing an adapted screenplay with Irish actor Denise McCormack and enjoys collaborating with other artists. Her latest work with Mary-Ruth Walsh on her 'SKIN DEEP' project can be viewed here.
In 2020 she co-curated the Way for Words Literary Festival in Wicklow. She co-organised/hosted International Women's Day Charity Cabaret Event at The Whale Theatre in Greystones, Wicklow, in 2019 and 2020. She has read and discussed her work as part of literary panels for Culture Night, Bray Literary Festival and Staccato.
In 2019 she was an Irish Writers Centre/Cill Rialaig Professional Writers Residency Recipient and courtesy of Wicklow Council Council Arts Funding had multiple residencies in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. Olivia has attended the University of Limerick Creative Writing Winter School in 2018 and 2019, with writers such as Prof. Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, Donal Ryan, Eoin Devereux, Kit De Waal, Rob Doyle, Martin Dyar, and Kerry Neville, She met her writers group, Chekhov or Fuckoff, during the six month Stinging Fly Fiction workshop she attended in 2018/2019.
Olivia won the Bray Literary Festival Flash Fiction Prize in 2018 and was one of three writers selected for Fiction At The Friary New Writer Showcase at Cork International Short Story Festival. She was a WORDS IRELAND mentee in the same year and has been placed or short listed in many short story competitions including Benedict Kiely twice, Sunday Business Post/Penguin SS and Dalkey Creates.
Her flash fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Wigleaf Best of the Net, BIFFY TOP 50 and UK National Flash Fiction Award.
Her writing can be found in many journals in print and online, including Crannog, The Cormorant, The Honest Ulsterman, Cease Cows and Reflex Fiction.
