AUTHOR INTERVIEWS

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Beginner’s pluck: Journal.ie columnist Carl Kinsella
Beginner’s pluck: Journal.ie columnist Carl Kinsella
This collection of funny, thought provoking essays investigate the way millennials relate to the world

Sat, 22 Nov, 2025

Author interview: From family fortunes to scandals, real-life drama of Dunnes dynasty
Author interview: From family fortunes to scandals, real-life drama of Dunnes dynasty
Matt Cooper’s new book reveals how the owners of retail empire have had triumphs but also turmoil over years, from kidnapping and addiction to a bitter battle for succession

Fri, 21 Nov, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Researcher and ambassador for Shine Cathy Shah
Beginner’s pluck: Researcher and ambassador for Shine Cathy Shah
'Rabbit Hole and Rainbows' charts Cathy’s mental health struggles; her trauma, her moments of stigma, silence, and despair, as she battles addiction and dysfunctional relationships

Sat, 15 Nov, 2025

Author interview: Youth facing challenges need ‘revolutionary changes’
Author interview: Youth facing challenges need ‘revolutionary changes’
Sara Cullen hopes her novel, 'Blood Red Sky', will cause policymakers and adult readers to reflect on how we as a society view young people who get into trouble

Fri, 14 Nov, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Copywriter and translator Patrick Doherty
Beginner’s pluck: Copywriter and translator Patrick Doherty
'Pure Innocent Boy', which started as a short story, is a powerful, poignant account of deep dissociation

Sat, 08 Nov, 2025

IRELAND-ENVIRONMENT-CLIMATE-NATURE
Beginner's pluck: Poet, cinematographer and rewilder Randal Plunkett 
Part biography, part a treatise on rewilding, 'Wild Thing' is an insightful and inspirational read

Sat, 01 Nov, 2025

Katriona O'Sullivan: 'Even in the darkest moments, there was so much brightness, too'
Katriona O'Sullivan: 'Even in the darkest moments, there was so much brightness, too'
As guest editor, Annmarie O’Connor wanted to interview a person who had faced the rubble of life. Here, she talks to Katriona O’Sullivan about picking up the pieces

Wed, 22 Oct, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Artist and writer Brendan Mac Evilly
Beginner’s pluck: Artist and writer Brendan Mac Evilly
'Deep Burn' is an absorbing novel, based in the world of conceptual art, it examines obsession, fame, and envy

Sat, 18 Oct, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Former politician Katherine Zappone
Beginner’s pluck: Former politician Katherine Zappone
'Love in a Time of Politics' is a fascinating, moving, and highly readable account of a life lived with conviction

Sat, 11 Oct, 2025

Jane Casey, Author of crime fiction. Photographed at her home in Wandsworth, London.
Author interview: Jane Casey on the Cork crime writing scene, stand-alone books, and her heroine Maeve Kerrigan
London-based Irish novelist Casey has released the latest book in the Maeve Kerrigan detective series but modestly tells Marjorie Brennan that she has none of her main character’s skills in sleuthing

Fri, 10 Oct, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Charity administrator Caragh Maxwell
Beginner’s pluck: Charity administrator Caragh Maxwell
 'I loved 'Sugartown' for its rawness, its assured writing, and its empathetic characters. Caragh Maxwell is a writer to watch'

Sat, 04 Oct, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Television producer/director Frank Shouldice
Beginner’s pluck: Television producer/director Frank Shouldice
'Beneath the Cedar Tree' is a poignant, wise, and ultimately uplifting portrait of a troubled marriage

Sat, 27 Sep, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Freelance TV producer Gráinne Lyons
Beginner’s pluck: Freelance TV producer Gráinne Lyons
Heading north from Cape Clear 'Wild Atlantic Women' tells the story of 11 pioneering women along the way

Sat, 20 Sep, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Filmmaker and writer Dave Tynan
Beginner’s pluck: Filmmaker and writer Dave Tynan
The stories in 'We Used to Dance Here' explore frustrated ambitions, toxic masculinity, and life on the margins in a Dublin in flux

Sat, 13 Sep, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Company co-owner and director Joseph Birchall
Beginner’s pluck: Company co-owner and director Joseph Birchall
'I would love to have led a life like Beckett — to have lived in Paris with life being all about the writing'

Sat, 06 Sep, 2025

Author interview: Novel imagines Jane Austen falling in love at the seaside
Author interview: Novel imagines Jane Austen falling in love at the seaside
Paula Byrne, an Austen scholar, was inspired to write 'Six Weeks by the Sea' because the question she is most frequently asked about the author is 'did she ever fall in love?'

Fri, 05 Sep, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Former teacher Aisling Rawle
Beginner’s pluck: Former teacher Aisling Rawle
'The Compound' is an addictive, beautifully-paced look at consumerism and a wish for fame in a mildly dystopian future

Sat, 30 Aug, 2025

Chris Newens
Author interview: ‘Food is one of the most immediate languages any place speaks’
'Moveable Feasts' is divided into 20 chapters, each devoted to the search for a dish representative of one of Paris’ 20 arrondissements

Mon, 25 Aug, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Swedish photographer Lina Scheynius
Beginner’s pluck: Swedish photographer Lina Scheynius
'Diary of an Ending' is a hybrid of memoir and autofiction that explores ideas about art and creativity, sex, and passion

Sat, 23 Aug, 2025

Heather Clark by Beowulf Sheehan
Author interview: ‘I took a risk publishing this book but it meant a lot to me’
Heather Clark's 'The Scrapbook' shines a light on what men bore witness to as soldiers in the Second World War

Fri, 22 Aug, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Karin Walker’s brilliant summer read
Beginner’s pluck: Karin Walker’s brilliant summer read
This heartwarming novel focuses on three women as they negotiate huge life changes. Will their friendship survive all the deception?

Mon, 18 Aug, 2025

Beginner's pluck: Writer and student Austin Taylor
Beginner's pluck: Writer and student Austin Taylor
After deferring her place at Harvard Law School, Austin wrote her first novel. But it is her second novel, Notes on Infinity, again written during a year out of college, that has recently been published

Sat, 09 Aug, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Cork-born author Barbara Leahy
Beginner’s pluck: Cork-born author Barbara Leahy
Since leaving university, Barbara has worked full-time in admin — fitting writing in during evenings and at weekends

Sat, 02 Aug, 2025

Author interview: Celebrating the Irish brothers who captured their moments in time
Author interview: Celebrating the Irish brothers who captured their moments in time
The Horgan brothers from Youghal, Co Cork, were pioneers in the fields of photography and cinema, leaving behind an invaluable chronicle of a formative chapter in our creative history

Fri, 01 Aug, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Full-time writer Grace Flahive
Beginner’s pluck: Full-time writer Grace Flahive
Funny and heartwarming, 'Palm Meridian' novel portrays a realistic, yet not dystopian view of the future

Sat, 26 Jul, 2025

Author interview: Untold story of Irishman who survived a slave labour camp
Author interview: Untold story of Irishman who survived a slave labour camp
Don Ferguson, an accountant in Singapore during the Second World War ended up in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, and was lucky to survive to tell the tale

Fri, 25 Jul, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Full-time writer Hattie Williams
Beginner’s pluck: Full-time writer Hattie Williams
'Bitter Sweet' is fast-paced novel that deals with grief, past trauma, and relationship power play

Sat, 19 Jul, 2025

2014 Winter TCA Tour - Day 13
Author interview: Finding new life among the hidden worlds at the ‘Ends of the Earth’
'If life can thrive and survive under the ice in Antarctica, it might also be possible it can thrive in extraterrestrial environments too'

Fri, 18 Jul, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Full-time writer Shane Tivenan
Beginner’s pluck: Full-time writer Shane Tivenan
The compassionate stories in this collection examine outsiders — showing interactions between the ‘lost’ and the ‘normal’ world

Sat, 12 Jul, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: English teacher and Waterford native Rose Keating
Beginner’s pluck: English teacher and Waterford native Rose Keating
These weird, unsettling stories in 'Oddbody' focused on the body explore themes of desire, anxiety, and shame. How far can the human form be pushed and subverted?

Sat, 05 Jul, 2025

Booker prize 2023
Author interview: ‘Gay life and history keeps on developing and changing’
The world of LGBTQ+ fiction is a completely different proposition now, and is flourishing thanks in no small part to writers such as Alan Hollinghurst

Fri, 04 Jul, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Full-time writer and mother Daria Lavelle
Beginner’s pluck: Full-time writer and mother Daria Lavelle
'Aftertaste' is a gourmet delight; it's highly original and hugely evocative, it definitely tugs at the heartstrings

Sat, 28 Jun, 2025

Author interview: ‘I don’t really think too much about writing when I’m doing my day job’
Author interview: ‘I don’t really think too much about writing when I’m doing my day job’
In 'The Benefactors', a cast of memorable characters coalesce when teenager Misty Johnson, from a hardscrabble background, is sexually assaulted by three boys with a more privileged upbringing

Fri, 27 Jun, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Belfast-born and Newcastle-based Gráinne O’Hare
Beginner’s pluck: Belfast-born and Newcastle-based Gráinne O’Hare
'Thirst Trap' is a brilliant portrayal of grief — and of growing up and it's written with humour, hope, and warmth

Sat, 21 Jun, 2025

Author interview: America’s ‘high-brow’ Cold War propaganda operation
Author interview: America’s ‘high-brow’ Cold War propaganda operation
A secret American programme put 10m Western books and magazines in the hands of intellectuals and professionals in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union for 37 years

Fri, 20 Jun, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Counsellor and psychotherapist Sinéad Nolan
Beginner’s pluck: Counsellor and psychotherapist Sinéad Nolan
Nolan's debut novel 'The Counting Game' is clever and compulsive and the plot is lifted by the psychological insights

Sat, 14 Jun, 2025

Author interview: Dizzyingly inventive narrative exploring the nature of time
Author interview: Dizzyingly inventive narrative exploring the nature of time
The concept of time, and the privilege of having it, is explored by Cork writer Caroline O’Donoghue in her latest book, 'Skipshock'

Fri, 13 Jun, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Freelance writer and editor Anna Carey
Beginner’s pluck: Freelance writer and editor Anna Carey
Anna’s first book, 'The Real Rebecca', won the Senior Children’s Book of the Year at the 2011 Irish Book Awards.

Sat, 07 Jun, 2025

Author interview: Fighting past the pain barrier to deliver a riveting mystery
Author interview: Fighting past the pain barrier to deliver a riveting mystery
Michelle McDonagh’s third novel focuses on a murder investigation in Blarney, Cork, where multiple layers of the search for truth connect in an immensely well-paced offering

Fri, 06 Jun, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Virginia Evans
Beginner’s pluck: Virginia Evans
When she was 32 and still unpublished, Virginia was accepted on the MFA for creative writing at Trinity College, Dublin, moving her family over 'an life has never been better'

Sun, 01 Jun, 2025

Edinburgh International Book Festival
Author interview: 'What are the politics of belonging if you don't have it'
Sarah Moss’s ninth novel, 'Ripeness', centres on Edith, a happily divorced 73-year-old who has found utter contentment since settling in the Burren

Sun, 01 Jun, 2025

'Female friendship is not a perfect love story any more than a romantic relationship is'
'Female friendship is not a perfect love story any more than a romantic relationship is'
From Sex and the City to The White Lotus, the complexities of women’s companionship has been a source of fascination for many. Vicki Notaro tells Elle Gordon how the idea of ‘the one’ in female friendships inspired her latest novel

Sat, 24 May, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Artist and writer Gethan Dick
Beginner’s pluck: Artist and writer Gethan Dick
An optimistic debut, this centres on love, motherhood, childbirth, and resilience and it’s glorious — funny, thought provoking, and wise

Sat, 24 May, 2025

Author interview: Psychiatric care left wanting — ‘I lost so much’ as a psychosis patient
Author interview: Psychiatric care left wanting — ‘I lost so much’ as a psychosis patient
In this compelling and affecting memoir Mary Ann Kenny describes how the experience of psychiatric care left her feeling dehumanised and even more traumatised

Fri, 23 May, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Writer and freelance journalist Caroline Madden
Beginner’s pluck: Writer and freelance journalist Caroline Madden
'The Marriage Vendetta' started off as a historical novel but after many rejections, Caroline rewrote it in a modern setting and sold it at auction

Sat, 17 May, 2025

Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025
Author interview: From Alaska to Afghanistan, and the Marines to a PhD in writing
Christopher Bryde trained for a time to be a monk, but ended up joining the US Marines. Deployed to Afghanistan, he lost both legs below the knee due to wounds

Fri, 16 May, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Dublin-born writer Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin
Beginner’s pluck: Dublin-born writer Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin
'Ordinary Saints' is pretty perfect. It’s informative, original, heartfelt, very real, and stunningly written

Sat, 10 May, 2025

Author interview: Harding back to college days with love of campus novel
Author interview: Harding back to college days with love of campus novel
'The Wildelings' is set in a fictionalised version of Trinity College Dublin in 1992 — when the author was a student there

Fri, 09 May, 2025

Beginner’s pluck: Long-term volunteer and GP John Travers
Beginner’s pluck: Long-term volunteer and GP John Travers
These beautifully written narratives of John’s training, volunteering, and practice focus on stories of remarkable people — the vulnerable, the brave, and the disadvantaged

Sat, 03 May, 2025

Beginner's pluck: Teacher and newspaper columnist Jennifer Horgan
Beginner's pluck: Teacher and newspaper columnist Jennifer Horgan
Jennifer has been writing poetry since the age of 10 and now brings us her first collection of poems

Fri, 25 Apr, 2025

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