Dr Sophia Hillan was Assistant Director of the Queen’s University of Belfast’s Institute of Irish Studies. Her publications include, In Quiet Places: Uncollected Stories, Letters and Critical Prose of Michael McLaverty (1989);The Silken Twine: A Study of the Works of Michael McLaverty (1992) and The Edge of Dark: A Sense of Place in the Writings of Michael McLaverty and Sam Hanna Bell (2001). As a writer of fiction, she has been published in David Marcus’s New Irish Writing, and his first Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories, 2004–5. She was a finalist for the Royal Society of Literature’s first V.S. Pritchett Memorial Award (1999), and her short story, Roses, was featured as part of BBC Radio 4’s Defining Moments series. She was short-listed for a Hennessy Award in 1981. Her short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published both in the late David Marcus's New Irish Writing in The Irish Press and his Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories, 2004-5. She will be speaking to us about her new book, May, Lou and Cass: Jane Austen’s Nieces in Ireland. Sophia Hillan's story uncovers a rich new seam of material on Jane Austen and her family, providing a new and intriguing link between Regency England and the turbulent world of nineteenth-century Ireland: including famine times in Gweedore, Co.Donegal.