Debut Novels – BOOKED OUT Anna Fitzgerald, Orla Mackey and Alan Murrin in conversation with Pat Carty

Friday 08th November @ 6:00 pm
New Theatre, Temple Bar
€5. Booking required

Arts journalist Pat Carty is joined by some of Ireland’s most exciting emerging authors. Anna Fitzgerald’s Girl in the Making (Sandycove) is a deeply moving story capturing the dreams and terrors of girlhood in a difficult world. Alan Murrin’s The Coast Road (Bloomsbury) is a brilliantly observed novel about a closed rural community and the consequences of daring to move against the tide. Orla Mackey’s Mouthing (Hamish Hamilton) is a multigenerational and darkly hilarious portrait of small-town Irish life.

Anna Fitzgerald was born and raised in Dublin. Girl in the Making is her first novel.

Orla Mackey is a writer and teacher based in Kilkenny in Ireland. She studied English Literature at Trinity College, Dublin. Mouthing is her first novel.

Alan Murrin is from Donegal. Before publication, The Coast Road, was shortlisted for the Peters Fraser Dunlop Queer Fiction Prize and was long-listed for the Caledonia New Novel Award 2022. It was published in May 2024 by Bloomsbury (UK) and June 2024 by Harper Collins (US). The book will also be published in Germany, Italy and France. In 2021 he was the winner of the Bournemouth Writing Prize for his short story “The Wake”, which went on to be shortlisted for short story of the year at the Irish Book Awards. In 2023 he was awarded an Irish Arts Council Next Generation Award. He is a graduate of the prose fiction masters at the University of East Anglia. He writes for The Irish Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, Art Review and The White Review.

Pat Carty is a freelance arts journalist whose work regularly appears in The Business Post, Classic Rock Magazine, Hot Press, The Irish Examiner, The Irish Independent, The Irish Times, MOJO Magazine, The Sunday Independent, and The Sunday Times. He also contributes to programmes on Newstalk and RTÉ Radio One.

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