Ronan Bennett was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His novel The Catastrophist (1997) won the Irish Post Literature Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award. Havoc, in its third year (2004) won Irish Novel of the Year and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. His recent work includes the feature film Public Enemies in 2009 and the television series Hidden (2011), Gunpowder (2017) and Top Boy (2011–present).