Caoilinn Hughes is an Irish novelist and short story writer. She was the 2021 Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. Hughes is the author of The Wild Laughter (2020), which won the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize.

Her first novel, Orchid & the Wasp (2018), won the Collyer Bristow Prize and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Her short stories have received numerous accolades, including the Irish Book Awards' Story of the Year, The Moth Short Story Prize, and an O.Henry Prize.

She has served as the Oscar Wilde Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. Hughes's third novel, The Alternatives, is set to be published by Riverhead/Oneworld in 2024.