Billy Roche

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Billy Roche is an Irish playwright born in 1949 in Wexford. Originally a singer with The Roach Band, he turned to writing in the 1980s. His most famous works include the plays The Wexford Trilogy (A Handful of Stars, Poor Beast In The Rain, Belfry), The Cavalcaders, Amphibians, On Such As We, the screenplay Trojan Eddie and the novel Tumbling Down. He was born in and still lives in Wexford and most of his writings are based there.

As an actor he has appeared in Aristocrats, The Cavalcaders, Man About Dog and Trojan Eddie.

Billy Roche's collection of short stories, 'Tales from Rainwater Pond' was published in 2006. In 2007 he was elected a member of Aosdána.

In 2005, Billy handpicked students from all over Wexford for his teachings. Together, they invented the first 'Novus' magazine which went on sale a number of days after the group disbanded. These students, who were given the best of tutoring from Billy and his longtime friend Eoin Colfer(author of the internationally acclaimed novels 'Artemis Fowl'), were the first in a long line of students under Billy's coaching. Each had their own short stories which Roche and Colfer both went through with the students and helped them make changes to better suit the stories. These students included Sean Fortune, Kristian McGrath, Pagan McGrath, Peter Neville & Christopher Berry. Billy's advice to these young teenagers was to keep writing as he expected big things from them.