Michael Hughes was born and raised in the border town of Keady in Northern Ireland. After university, he trained in theatre at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris, and he has worked for many years as an actor under the professional name Michael Colgan. He previously taught Creative Writing in the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast, before moving to Queen Mary University of London, where he currently teaches. He is the author of the novels The Countenance Divine and Country, which won the London Hellenic Prize and was shortlisted for the EU Prize for Literature.

The Countenance Divine is never less than superbly stimulating. It is a debut of high ambition that marks the arrival of a considerable talent