Cristín Leach

Cristín Leach is an Irish writer and author of the critically acclaimed divorce-art memoir Negative Space. A Sunday Times Ireland art critic for twenty years, her short fiction, journalism, collaborative and hybrid texts have been widely published, including in the literary journals Winter Papers and The Four Faced Liar, Irish Arts Review, Irish Writers Handbook, competition anthologies, gallery and artist books. Her audio essays and multimedia artworks have been broadcast and exhibited in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Denmark and Peru. Read by the author, Negative Space was a 2024 RTÉ Radio 1 Book on One and a 2022 Irish non-fiction bestseller. From Ten Till Dusk, her experimental collection of archive-based writing, was published to mark the bicentenary of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts in 2023. Her writing explores tensions between public and private voice, themes including anxiety, sexuality and fidelity, roles played by place, politics and family history in forming identity, and connections between words, bodies and art.

She a recipient of a 2025 Arts Council Agility Award for Literature and writing residency awards in Birr, County Offaly and at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, France. Her alternative hymn, ‘Harvesting History’, written for artist Debbie Godsell’s ‘Flail’, premiered with a performance at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre in 2025. Her work is part of the OPW Irish State Art Collection.

An award-winning broadcaster, she presented Ireland Portrayed and co-presented Through the Canvas for RTÉ Lyric FM, and is a stand-in presenter for Arena on RTÉ Radio 1.