Dublin City Libraries Readers’ Day Colin Barrett and Estelle Birdy in conversation with Kevin Power. Catherine Dunne in conversation with Neil Hegarty. Tana French and Lucy Foley in conversation with Declan Burke
In Partnership with Dublin City Libraries
Join us for a lively and engaging afternoon of book chat with some of Ireland’s most exciting contemporary authors. Kevin Power will be in conversation with Colin Barrett about his darkly funny and thrilling debut novel Wild Houses (Jonathan Cape), and with Estelle Birdy about her explosively original debut novel Ravelling (The Lilliput Press). Neil Hegarty will be in conversation with Catherine Dunne about her moving and compelling new novel A Good Enough Mother (Betime Books). Declan Burke will be in conversation with Tana French about her gripping thriller The Hunter (Viking), and with Lucy Foley about her thrilling new murder mystery, The Midnight Feast (HarperCollins).
There will be ISL interpretation at this event.
Colin Barrett grew up in County Mayo, Ireland. His stories have been published in The Stinging Fly, Granta, Harper’s and the New Yorker. His first book, the short story collection Young Skins, won the Guardian First Book Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His second collection, Homesickness, made the NewYork Times 100 Notable Books of the Year and was a Book of the Year in Oprah Daily and the Irish Times.
© Bryan Meade
Estelle Birdy is a writer, poet, book critic and yoga teacher who lives with her family in Dublin. Her debut novel Ravelling was a winner of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair in 2020. Her work is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.
Catherine Dunne is the author of twelve novels, several essays and one work of non-fiction. An Unconsidered People documents the lived experience of some half a million Irish immigrants to Britain in the dismal years of the 1950s. Catherine’s novels have been shortlisted for a number of prizes, including Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the International Strega Prize. The Things We Know Now won the Giovanni Boccaccio International Prize for Fiction in 2013 and The Years That Followed, published in 2016, was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Her latest novel, A Good Enough Mother, won the European Rapallo Prize for fiction in November 2023, and was published in English by Betimes Books in June 2024. Her work has been translated into several languages. She was the recipient of the 2018 Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature and is a member of Aosdána.
Tana French is the Sunday Times and New York Times-bestselling author of In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbour, The Secret Place, The Trespasser and The Wych Elm. Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Barry and Macavity awards, the LA Times Book Prize for Best Mystery/Thriller and the Irish Book Award for Best Crime Fiction. She grew up in Ireland, Italy, the US and Malawi, and trained as an actor at Trinity College Dublin. She lives in Dublin with her family.
© Philippa Gedge
Lucy Foley is a No.1 Sunday Times, Irish Times and New York Times bestselling author. Her contemporary murder mystery thrillers, The Hunting Party, The Guest List and The Paris Apartment have sold over 5 million copies worldwide. The Guest List was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month selection, a Reese’s Book Club pick, it was chosen as one of The Times and Sunday Times Crime Books of the Year, and it won the Goodreads Choice Award for best mystery/thriller.
Irish writer and academic Kevin Power is a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin. His writing appears regularly in The Sunday Business Post’s book review section. His novel Bad Day in Blackrock was published by The Lilliput Press in 2008, and was later adapted to a film by Lenny Abrahamson, entitled What Richard Did (2012), which picked up five awards at the Irish Film and Television Awards. In 2009, Power received the highly coveted Hennessy XO Emerging Fiction Award and was also shortlisted for RTÉ’s Francis MacManus short story award in 2007. He was the winner of the 2009 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. In 2021, Power released White City, his much-anticipated second novel, to wide acclaim. His latest book is The Written World: Essays & Reviews.
Neil Hegarty’s novels include The Jewel; and Inch Levels, which was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Novel of the Year award. Neil’s non-fiction titles include the biography Frost: That Was the Life That Was, and The Story of Ireland, which accompanies the RTE-BBC television history of Ireland. His short fiction and essays have appeared in the Dublin Review, Stinging Fly, Tangerine, and elsewhere; and he is co-editor of the essay collection Impermanence. He is a regular literary reviewer on the Irish Times.
Declan Burke is the author of Eightball Boogie (2003), The Big O (2007), Absolute Zero Cool (2011), Slaughter’s Hound (2012), Crime Always Pays (2014), The Lost and the Blind (2014) and The Lammisters (2019). Absolute Zero Cool won the Goldsboro Award for Best Humorous Crime Novel in 2012. Eightball Boogie and Slaughter’s Hound were shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards. Declan is also the editor of Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the 21st Century (2011) and Trouble is Our Business (2016), and the co-editor, with John Connolly, of Books to Die For (2013), which won the Anthony Award for Best Non-Fiction Crime. Declan was a UNESCO / Dublin City writer-in-residence for 2017-18. His most recent novel is The Lammisters (2019).