Maura McHugh

Maura McHugh was born in the USA, but was press-ganged back to Ireland when she was too young to object.

Over the years she has obtained a B.A. in English and History, a M.A. in English (a research thesis on 19th century Anglo-Irish supernatural fiction), completed a short course on filmmaking, a Diploma in Film Studies, and a M.A. in Screenwriting.

In 2006 she was accepted into the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle: a six-week residential course that selects 18 writers from an international field to train them to be professional writers of sf/fantasy/horror. She was the recipient of the Gordon R Dickson scholarship for that year.

Maura works for the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild as their web master, newsletter editor and blogger, but otherwise writes as much as possible. Her short stories and poetry have been published in markets such as the Fantasy anthology, the Jabberwocky 3 anthology, Shroud Magazine, Aoife’s Kiss, Black Static, Arkham Tales, Doorways Magazine, Paradox Magazine and M-Brane SF and Goblin Fruit. She’s had two stories podcast on Pseudopod: “Bone Mother” and “The Tamga”.

Her screenplay “Hotel Training” was shot as a short film in 2009, as part of the Hotel Darklight anthology film, a project created for the Darklight Film Festival in Dublin. She’s served as juror for the Octocon’s Golden Blasters short film competition in 2009 – 2011, the Junior Galway Film Fleadh pitching competition in 2009 and 2010, and the Junior Galway Film Fleadh Short Film competition in 2011. She was a member of the Shirley Jackson Award jury in 2011.

In 2010 she co-organised The Campaign for Real Fear horror short story competition with British author Christopher Fowler, and the twenty winners were published in Black Static.

She is the writer on the comic book series Róisín Dubh, also published by Atomic Diner. Her script ‘The Nail’, drawn by Star St. Germain, is in the Womanthology comic book anthology by IDW Publishing.