Three Irish writers — Maggie O’Farrell, Bernard MacLaverty, and Mark O’Connell — have made the longlist of 12 authors for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize.

Irish authors Sebastian Barry and Maggie O’Farrell have been shortlisted for the 2016 Costa Novel Award

An encounter with a celebrity that showed the misery of fame inspired Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel, she tells Jonathan de Burca Butler.