Activity at The Crescent and Belfast Book Festival is a collaborative endeavour. Each year, we work with a pool of Freelancers who bring their expertise, ideas and range of perspectives to inform and shape our programme. For 2024/25, we are delighted to be working with: Music Associate - Donal Scullion; and Belfast Book Festival Associate - Emma Cummins.
Donal Scullion is a performer, songwriter and arranger working with a wide variety of acts over 20+ years. A solo acoustic performer of original music, band leader and songwriter for 10-piece original soul machine NI Soul Troop, member of 8-piece original reggae outfit The Vibes, and guitarist and vocalist in The Unholy Gospel Band. As an arranger and session musician worked with many great local acts including Cormac Neeson, Malojian, Ciara O’Neil, Owen Lamont and many others. This eclectic background has led to performances at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Ulster Hall, festivals, theatres, pubs and clubs all over UK and Ireland, support slots with a wide variety of artists including Lee “Scratch” Perry, The Specials, The Brand New Heavies, Craig Charles, Damien Dempsey, The Answer and And So I Watch You From Afar. Click here to read more about Donal.
Emma Cummins is an Associate for Belfast Book Festival 2025. She is the former manager of the Guardian Bookshop, and previously worked for Guardian Masterclasses as a programmer and copywriter. Emma's essays and reviews have been published in The Quietus, The Guardian, Open Democracy, Flash Art International and Aesthetica. She was shortlisted for the Fish Short Memoir Prize 2021. Emma writes fiction, and has read her work at events with the Seamus Heaney Centre and John Hewitt International Summer School. She is developing a series of short stories, for which she was awarded The Tyrone Guthrie Centre Bursary 2025-6 funded by Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council and the Island Arts Centre. Her fiction explores growing up in Northern Ireland, moving 'over the water' to England, and returning home. Emma is from Hillsborough, Co. Down, and lives in South Belfast.
