call me Kev

No matter what I put down here, I will be embarrassed by it. It will oversell me or, most likely, come off as too self-deprecating. If I canvas friends, they’ll reply with “reads well, dude” or “I’d go easy on the self-deprecating stuff,” and it would leave me no better off. AI will tell me it’s amazing, and when I question why, it’ll fold: “You’re right to push back. That’s on me.”

So, I am writing this, as malformed as it may be, for those who really want to know me and will hopefully forgive me for being too much.

I wrote a movie. It went to Sundance. It’s a cult hit now, I suppose. I have a podcast. It’s brilliant craic to do. I am writing a book. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written. I wish I wrote a book sooner. There, that’s for the people who want the headlines, not the heartbeat.

I write. It’s what I’m best at. Only because I can’t do anything else as well. I can wire a plug, dig a hole, fall out with myself over an unread text. I can edit a podcast to the point where it sounds like I'm time-travelling through our past episodes with my co-host and leaping into the future where I humiliate myself on stage interviewing Steven Spielberg.

But writing is what I really enjoy finishing. I am currently excited to finish this bio.

A child of the eighties, I was born in London to Irish parents, but raised on welfare on the Northside of Cork City by a single “mum,” as she insisted on being called. I’ve been battling a slippery accent, a smart mouth and a blank page ever since.

I’ve been writing screenplays since I was 19, after falling in love with films when I was four or perhaps five. They’re one of my earliest memories. Since 2026, I have written short stories, exploring the form, and also novels, adoring their scope. I am on my second book right now. Don’t look for them. They haven’t been published. I should say yet, but having been a professional screenwriter for twenty years, I am all too aware that just because you write something well doesn’t mean it’ll do well for you.

If I’m honest, I feel more of a storyteller than a writer. A writer feels academic, studious, considered. I feel more like a handyman, maybe if I overshoot my shot, an artisan. I use the tools I have to make the things I like, and I don’t know what any of them are called, only that this one is sharp and this one is heavy, and slamming them together can make me feel things I didn’t expect.

I have written fifty or so original screenplays. They all fundamentally boil down to the wrong people for the story doing all the wrong things for the right reasons.

I got very lucky once — in that the industry had yet to collapse — and had one of my original scripts made into a movie in 2012. I knew, walking around the set in the middle of that awful winter of 2011, blown out of it in Donegal, that it would be a long time before it happened again. I manifested that, I guess.

I wish I could use those powers for good.

That film we made was Grabbers, and it remains a good representation of who I am as a writer. What I like, and what I want to put into the world.

On a side note, I love the ocean. I’ve swum with sharks. I’ve worked with a few too. But writing novels after so many years of writing scripts has felt like diving off the Great Barrier Reef – which I’ve done. I wanted to slip that in there because it remains one of the most magical things I’ve ever experienced and I wish we took better care of this beautiful world.

I’ve also been skydiving and bungee jumping a few times—never, ever again! Other than that, I write and procrastinate with writer friends on text chains. I’m single and I don’t have kids. I had a dog, Rosie, but she died on me after thirteen years of being my best scene partner. I still dream about her. Dogs are one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. If you can afford it, get a dog.

I’ve not won a single thing in my life, not even a shilling on a scratch card. It’s become one of my favourite anecdotes to trot out as it shocks some people so much they’ve been known to shrug. I’ve been nominated a lot, like for IFTAs and Writers’ Guild of Great Britain awards but never won. My favourite nomination, though, was for a Razzie after I did a quick rewrite on a Charles Dickens adaptation in which Raff Law did parkour as Oliver Twist for some reason and stole artwork for Michael Caine and Rita Ora for similar reasons.

I’m not in the slightest bit bitter about any of that. I prayed on the night of the IFTAs that I wouldn’t win as giving a speech on live telly scared the bejesus out of me. I had nothing to fear though as I was seated about eight seats in the middle aisle ten rows back.

I worked with some amazing actors on a series called Likely Stories, briefly in 2016, adapting the short stories of Neil Gaiman, for Sky Arts. Those films starred folks like George MacKay, Denise Gough, Tom Hughes, Monica Dolan, Johnny Vegas, Kenneth Cranham and Rita Tushingham. They wouldn’t know me from Adam, however, as I never went to the set because I had the flu, and never got to become best friends with all the cast as I’m sure would’ve happened.

Ideas come to me from god knows where, but I try to write them as honestly as I possibly can so that if I personalise them no one else can better me as they’re not me. I have lots of silly rules like that that I hold myself to, some learned the hard way, others I always knew for some reason and no one believed me. And yet, and yet. But writing from the heart is all I have over anyone else, so I stick to that. It’s what gives me the confidence to write anything at all. I want to be known for what I can do. I want you, if you ever do read me, to like me for me, at my truest self, and I want my stories to do for others what other writers’ stories did for me. They saved me. And ruined me.

My favourite book is The Princess Bride. My favourite film is Superman: The Movie. I know it’s not cool, but your first love is your first love, and I adore that film and that book. The first film I saw too young that rewired my brain was John Carpenter’s Halloween. The one that confirmed I would destroy any hope of an easy mind by wanting to make films was Jurassic Park, which I saw as a twelve-year-old in the old Capitol Cinema in Cork. I practically levitated over the sticky carpet leaving the cinema. Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Simpsons and Friends did a fair amount of the remaining work of raising me.

I’ve known what I wanted to do since before I knew how to do it. I’m still not sure how it’s done, but I keep trying. Some would say it’s a calling. Others definitely would not.

Stories kept me company as a kid. I was a child of divorce with the wrong accent for the wrong time, and I needed the release they provided. I was an only child too and spent a lot of time in my head. Movies were like waking dreams. Books were movies I got to direct in my dreams.

I hope this bio has given you a better idea of me.

I also hope you one day get to read more from me, like my debut book, or see something I pored over to get right for the big or small screen like the handful of specs currently on people’s desktops. In the meantime, if you’re still curious, you can listen to me try and bug my best pal Will Collins — a superb writer of many Cartoon Saloon classics — on one of our two podcasts, be it Screen, Play where we take something topical and pick a top three, or The Best Bits where we pick our favourite scenes from randomly selected weirdly specific themes. Those are also labours of love.