"I thought it would be a good thing to follow John Redmond’s words. I thought for my mother’s sake, her gentle soul, for the sake of my own children, I might go out and fight for to save Europe so that we might have the Home Rule in Ireland in the upshot. I came out to fight for a country that doesn’t exist, and now, Willie, mark my words, it never will.”

Evelyn Grant is a flute-player and presenter of Week End Drive on RTÉ Lyric fm. She is also musical director and conductor of the Cork Pops

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.

Seven Irish novels are in contention for the world’s largest literary prize as the nominations for the International Dublin Literary Awards are revealed.

Aoife Burke is a cellist from Cork, and currently holds a residency at the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork, as part of which she curates the summer lunchtime concert series and the Spotlight chamber music series. 

Ireland’s reputation as a haven for writers is often seen to rest on past glories, like the works of Joyce, Yeats, Beckett, O’Casey and all the other greats of the 20th century.

Novelist Sebastian Barry has won the prestigious Walter Scott literary prize for a second time.

Here's what you need to know.

Here are the top three films you don’t want to miss this week, writes Declan Burke.

With his role in Jim Sheridan’s new film, The Secret Scripture, Eric Bana has added to his reputation as one of the most versatile actors around, writes Esther McCarthy.

Vanessa Redgrave, Nathalie Baye, Kerry Fox, Ross Noble, Anna Friel, and Ben Wheatley are among the stars joining Irish talents Jack Reynor, Moe Dunford, Cillian Murphy, John Butler, and Aiden Gillen on the red carpet.

Irish novelist and playwright Sebastian Barry has won the Costa Novel Award for the second time for his book, Days Without End.

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

Diverse and exciting writing talent has been shortlisted across 14 categories for the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards.

THE late actor, broadcaster and seanachaí, Eamon Kelly, has left a treasure trove of stories that are being brought to life by actor, Jack Healy. 

RECENTLY issued as a paperback, having been first published in 2005 and short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Sebastian Barry’s First World War novel is brilliant in its evocation of the killing fields in Flanders and the tragedy of the protagonist. 

As Jim Sheridan heads for Schull, he tells Esther McCarthy how the internet has been such a disruptive force for filmmakers

The longlist for the International DUBLIN Literary Award has been announced with seven Irish novels among the 160 titles that have been nominated by libraries worldwide.

Tim taught in India with the VSO after college, then moved to London to study accountancy. Back in Dublin, he joined the National Irish Investment Bank, where he remained until 1990.

ONLY cowards hide behind children. The ‘no’ side are cowards who want to make this marriage-equality referendum about hate, when it should be about love.

SEBASTIAN BARRY’S latest novel, his eighth (just published in paperback), opens with a bang: the World War II torpedoing of a ship carrying British officers to Africa.

The cash-pile at the firm owned by movie director Jim Sheridan more than tripled in 2013 to €352,608.

The Arts Council has published the full list of nominees for the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction.

Ghost Moth

IT STRUCK a sensitive nerve when the poet WJ Mc Cormack, aka Hugh Maxton, this week defended Aosdána’s annual funding of €2.7 million by mentioning that Fair City cost €11 million. This fact was met, according to an RTÉ report, with laughter from the floor of Aosdána’s general assembly meeting at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham.

An elite artists’ group has rejected public criticism over the amount of funding it receives from the taxpayer, claiming the Government would drive “JCBs full of money” to any private business that provided such a return on the “investment”.

This is already showing signs of being a good year for film production, with a number of high-profile projects scheduled to begin filming around the country.

More than three decades after winning her first Hennessy literary prize, writer Deirdre Madden has been inducted into the Hennessy Literary Awards Hall of Fame.

Hollywood superstar Jessica Chastain is set to make a film in Ireland about a woman accused of nymphomania.

POLITICS is rock ’n’ roll for the ugly, and the shucksters, bounders and bumpkins who hang about in Leinster House are a motley crew.

Johnny Hanrahan, founder of Chameleon, a creative projects company which aims to stimulate Corkonians.

New Ways to Kill Your Mother

Eight Irish authors are among the 154 on the longlist for the world’s richest literary prize – the highest ever number.

Eight Irish authors are in with a chance of winning one of the world’s most valuable literary prizes after their books were nominated by libraries around the globe.

Selina Guinness

Condensed essays on individual novels are too short for academics and too analytical for the public, but will appeal to students, says Val Nolan

NUI Galway has today announced the recipients of its honorary degrees for 2012.

Louise Verity

AMERICAN author David Guterson has joined John Updike, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer and other literary stars as the recipient of the dreaded Bad Sex in Fiction award.

AMERICAN author David Guterson has joined John Updike, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer and other literary stars as the recipient of the dreaded Bad Sex in Fiction award.

Biography

“My earliest memory was of my mother reading Roald Dahl to us in bed. I later read a lot of Enid Blighton. I took a break from reading in my teens, but rediscovered it in my late twenties.