Kelly McCaughrain is a young adult author from Belfast, and was the Seamus Heaney Centre Children's Writing Fellow for Northern Ireland from 2019 to 2021, championing children's literature and supporting young writers across the north.

Her debut, Flying Tips for Flightless Birds (Walker Books, 2018), is an LGBT romcom balanced on the high-wire of teen life: Finch 'Franconi' Sullivan and his twin sister Birdie are the star trapeze act in their parents' circus, and when Finch isn't in the air he is avoiding both bullies and Hector, the clumsy new boy who trades maths tutoring for juggling lessons. It won the Children's Books Ireland Book of the Year and Eilis Dillon awards and the Northern Ireland Book Award, and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. Little Bang (Walker Books, 2021), a bittersweet Northern Irish romance about teen pregnancy and a young woman's right to choose her own future, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.

Her third novel, Just Another Dead Boy (2025), is a YA speculative romance set in a world where everyone knows the date they will die. The rich check into luxury resorts for their final weeks, and Regan works at one as a 'Juliet', hired to make dying boys feel they have found true love before the end. Her next client, Jude, has a week left - and when the fake romance starts to turn into something else, the two of them set about taking on Fate itself.