Emerging Voices Ruth McKee and Juliano Zaffino in conversation with Patrick Holloway
Exploring themes from first love, grief and trauma to family bonds and deep friendships, join us for an evening around two captivating debut novels. In Ruth McKee’s Wild Iris (Dedalus Press) the past haunts the present in this witty, unflinching portrait of a woman at a devastating crossroads. Juliano Zaffino’s The Steps (Tramp Press) blends psychological suspense with intimate family drama in this story of rebuilding life after tragedy. The authors join author Patrick Holloway in conversation.
This is an 18+ event.
Ruth McKee is a novelist and short fiction writer, twice-shortlisted for the Hennessy Literary Awards and a winner of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair. Wild Iris (Dedalus) is her debut novel, described by John Banville as ‘wonderfully inventive…funny, moving and vastly entertaining.’ She’s the editor of Books Ireland, The Irish Writers Handbook and the host of the Burning Books podcast.
Juliano Zaffino is a writer, researcher and editor based near London. He founded YourShelf, a bespoke book-subscription service, in 2016. Over time, YourShelf expanded to encompass the YourShelf Podcast, where he interviewed a variety of writers from Lauren Groff to Doireann Ni Ghriofa, as well as the YourShelf Press, which published the author’s own poetry collection All Those Bodies And They’re Moving (2020), and Rebecca Lucy Taylor’s SELF ESTEEM (2021). The author also introduced Florence Welch to the Strasbourg dancing plague of 1616, which inspired her 2022 album Dance Fever. Zaffino holds a PhD on ‘Cutting Shakespeare’, from the Shakespeare Institute and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The Steps is his first novel.
Patrick Holloway is a prize-winning writer of fiction and poetry. His debut novel, The Language of Remembering, was published in 2025 to critical acclaim. His second novel, Interlude, is forthcoming in 2027 with Eriu. His work appears in The Stinging Fly, The Moth, The London Magazine, Southword, Carve, Overland, The Irish Times and The Irish Independent. He is the winner of The Bath Short Story Prize, The Molly Keane Creative Writing Prize, The Raymond Carver Contest, The Allingham Fiction Contest The Flash 500, among others. He is a frequent writer and critic for The Irish Times and The Irish Examiner. He is the 2026 Writer in Residence at Maynooth University.
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