Novels & Poetry
Angeline King is a novelist from Larne in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. She was Writer in Residence of Ulster University from 2020 to 2023, during which time she completed a PhD in English (Creative Writing). Angeline recently completed her sixth novel, part of an Arts Council of Northern Ireland 2024 project.
Angeline’s novels blend coming-of-age drama with genealogical adventure and international perspectives on Northern Ireland. The Irish Times has described her work as ‘delightfully funny’. Ruth McKee wrote of Angeline’s first historical novel, Dusty Bluebells, ‘Angeline King brings a rich, cultural history to life in a family saga spanning 50 years…Pithy with Ulster Scots, old rhymes, cures and sayings, there is a sense of magic to it all.’ Angeline’s novels are self-published.
Her award-winning poems and short stories have been published in a range of national and regional publications, including the Community Arts Partnership poetry anthologies, Honest Ulsterman, The Irish Times and Bangor Literary Journal.
Academic Writing
Angeline’s latest work is a chapter on Seamus Heaney HomePlace for the Routledge Companion to Seamus Heaney (forthcoming in 2026). She has also written for the journals Fortnight and Familia, while she runs both a history and poetry blog. A history book on the Festival Tradition of Irish dancing is also among Angeline’s published work.
Translation
Angeline has translated poems from French and Dutch into English, Ulster Scots and Scots, and is increasingly enjoying this work. She would be open to translating novels from French into English.
Background
Angeline’s background is in business and languages — she worked in publishing for McGraw-Hill in the Netherlands and as a senior manager for Texthelp Ltd before establishing her writing career in January 2015.
Born in Larne, County Antrim, in 1975, she has lived in France, the Netherlands and America and also spent a significant portion of her twenties and thirties travelling with work or living abroad. She adopted her maiden name, King, for her writing career in 2015.
Angeline recently worked on educational projects at the Seamus Heaney HomePlace.
Scots Writing
Concurrent with Standard English work, Angeline has made a significant contribution to Irish and Scottish literature through her Ulster Scots writing. She was the first woman to write an entire novel in Ulster Scots. In 2025, she was commissioned to write a poem in response to Robert Burns and his Ulster contemporaries for a unique audio ‘Jukebox’ poetry project based on the Linen Hall Library’s Gibson Collection.
PhD
Angeline studied Diary Novels, Female Writers who write in Scots or Ulster Scots and the Agnew /Ó Gnímh poets and wrote and published a diary novel across these themes.