


In conversation with author Nuala O’Connor
Irish Book Awards 2015 – Shortlist Announced!
The Shortlist for the Irish Book Awards was announced today and there are some great books and authors to check out. The Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards brings together the entire literary community – readers, authors, booksellers, publishers and librarians – to recognise and celebrate the very best of Irish literary talent across…


Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann
An interview with Martina Devlin, author of About Sisterland
Irish author and journalist Martina Devlin was born in Omagh and her new novel About Sisterland imagines a 22nd century world run by women, following the decimation of the male species in a world-altering war. Men are the inferior sex in Sisterland controlled through the use of testosterone-regulating drugs, denied education, segregated from women and used…

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Brian Friel, 1929 – 2015
Brian Friel died yesterday aged 86. Often called the Irish Chekhov, it is fair to say that his death is a loss not just to Ireland but to the world. He may only have written about Ireland, but what he wrote was universal as he constantly explored the boundaries between the past and the present,…

Those We Left Behind by Stuart Neville
I read Stuart Neville’s The Twelve for Reading Ireland Month back in March and was impressed with a thrilling, well-paced crime novel that perfectly depicted a Northern Ireland trying to come to terms with life after the ostensible end of the Troubles. His new novel Those We Left Behind, he has moved on immeasurably from…

A Kind of Compass: Stories on Distance edited by Belinda McKeon
Tramp Press a new independent publishing house based in Dublin was founded by Sarah Davis-Goff and Lisa Coen to encourage, support and maintain Ireland’s literary talent. Their aim to publish books for readers and to bring great writing in from the cold seems to be paying off as Sara Baume’s Spill Simmer Falter Wither was…

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Miss Emily by Nuala O’Connor – review & giveaway!
While we are trying for others, power of life comes back, very faint at first, life the new bird, but by and by it has wings. Emily Dickinson, Letters of Emily Dickinson I was lucky enough to attend the launch of Nuala O’Connor’s new book Miss Emily at the Gutter Book Shop in Dublin last…

Dancing at Lughnasa at The Lyric Theatre Belfast
For it’s so clear that in order to begin to live in the present we must first redeem the past, and that can only be done by suffering, by strenuous, uninterrupted labour. Chekhov In 1990, my parents took me to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin to see a new play by Brian…
