Kelly McCaughrain Books in Order

Kelly McCaughrain was born in Belfast in 1977, and Belfast is still the city most closely tied to her work. She has joked that she also grew up in 19th-century Avonlea, which makes sense once you know how much Anne of Green Gables meant to her as a reader. That mix, real Belfast and bookish daydreaming, runs right through her fiction.

She started writing when she was six, and kept much of it tucked away for years.

Before publishing novels, McCaughrain studied psychology at Queen's University Belfast, then later returned to Queen's for further study in creative writing. That path feels like a good clue to what makes her books work. She is interested in how teenagers think, how families shape them, and what happens when young people start pushing back against the rules around them.

Her debut, Flying Tips for Flightless Birds, came out in 2018. Set around a struggling family circus school, it follows trapeze twins Finch and Birdie Franconi as an accident forces Finch into a new partnership with awkward newcomer Hector. Readers often respond to its warmth, humor, circus setting, and gentle but clear-eyed take on identity, bullying, friendship and first love. The book won a hat-trick of Children's Books Ireland awards, including Book of the Year, plus the Northern Ireland Book Award, and it was nominated for the Carnegie Medal.

Little Bang, published in 2024, showed a different side of her writing. The novel begins with Mel, a shy science nerd, and Sid, an easygoing songwriter, facing an unplanned pregnancy after their first date in Northern Ireland in 2018, when abortion was still illegal there. McCaughrain has said she felt driven to write the book because silence and bad information had left too many teenagers without honest stories or useful support. What makes the novel land is that it stays personal even while dealing with law, religion, family pressure and bodily autonomy. It went on to win Children's Books Ireland's Junior Juries' Award and Honour Award for Fiction, and it was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

She writes about teenagers as if their inner lives matter, because to her they plainly do.

Her third novel, Just Another Dead Boy, arrived in 2026 and moves into speculative romance. In that world, everyone knows the date they will die, and a girl called Regan works at a luxury resort where rich families pay for the illusion of one last great love story. When Regan is matched with Jude, whose time is almost up, the fake romance starts tipping into something real. Even with the high-concept setup, the questions are familiar McCaughrain territory: choice, power, class, intimacy, and what it costs to live honestly.

Across all three books, certain patterns keep coming back. She is drawn to outsiders, teenagers under pressure, first relationships, and the wide gap between what adults say is best and what young people feel in their bones. Her stories can be funny, awkward, romantic and politically alert all at once. Northern Ireland matters in them too, not just as scenery, but as a place where history, religion, class and everyday life keep rubbing against each other.

Outside her fiction, McCaughrain has put real time into helping younger writers find their feet. She was Children's Writing Fellow for Northern Ireland from 2019 to 2021, has mentored teenagers through Fighting Words NI, and created resources to help schools set up creative writing groups. She has said she gets some of her best ideas from observing teens, admiring both their idealism and their strong sense of unfairness. That may be the simplest way into her work.

She has also worked in education, supporting young adults with special needs at Belfast Met College. And when she steps away from the desk, her off-page life sounds refreshingly unglamorous: books, school visits, travel, and trips with her husband Michael and their old campervan, Gerda. It fits. Her novels may tackle hard subjects, but they stay grounded in ordinary people, sharp observation and a lot of heart.