Pat Boran (born 1963) is an Irish poet. Born in Portlaoise, Boran has lived in Dublin for a number of years. He is Programme Director of the annual Dublin Writers Festival and, since 2005, publisher of the Dedalus Press which publishes contemporary Irish poetry as well as a Poetry Europe series of work from other languages in translation. As a poet, Boran has published four full-length collections The Unwound Clock (1990), Familiar Things (1993), The Shape of Water (1996) and As the Hand, the Glove (2001), as well as a chapbook History and Promise (1990), selections from all of which feature in his New and Selected Poems (Salt Publishing, UK, 2005). His fiction publications include the volume of short stories Strange Bedfellows (1991) and the children's fiction All the Way from China (1998), shortlisted for the Bisto Book of the Year. His non-fiction publications include A Short History of Dublin (1999) and The Portable Creative Writing Workshop (1999, revised and updated, New Island, 2005).