[2] Beirne currently teaches on the BA Writing and Literature Program at the Atlantic Technological University in Sligo.

[3][4] His debut novel The Eskimo in the Net was short-listed for the 2004 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and was selected as Book of the Year by the Daily Express.

Beirne's collaboration with composer Siobhán Cleary, Hum, was called "a theatrical tour de force" by The Irish Times.

[7] Beirne's first short story collection, In a Time of Drought and Hunger was shortlisted for the 2016 Danuta Gleed Literary Award.

[8] That same year, he was shortlisted for the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards for his short story "What a River Remembers of its Course.