Dublin City Libraries Readers’ Morning Anne Griffin and Una Mannion in conversation with Breda Brown. Kevin Curran, Olivia Fitzsimons and Michael Magee in conversation with Lisa McInerney. John Boyne and William Wall in conversation with Paula Shields

In Partnership with Dublin City Libraries

Join us for a lively and engaging morning of book chat with some of Ireland’s most exciting contemporary authors. Breda Brown will be in conversation with Anne Griffin about her latest novel The Island of Longing (Hachette), a haunting story about love, grief and hope that endures. Eoin will also be joined by Una Mannion in discussion about her latest novel Tell Me What I Am (Faber), a gripping story of family torn apart by secrets and lies. Lisa McInerney will be in discussion with Kevin Curran about Youth (The Lilliput Press), a love song to the possibilities of youth, unfolding in Ireland’s most diverse town, Balbriggan. Lisa will also be talking to Olivia Fitzsimons about The Quiet Whispers Never Stop (John Murray), a story of small-town claustrophobia, dysfunctional families, and the yearning for more. Finally, Lisa will be joined by Michael Magee talking about his novel Close to Home (Hamish Hamilton), a luminous and devastating portrait of modern masculinity in Northern Ireland as shaped by class, by trauma, and by silence, but also by the courage to love and to survive. Paula Shields will be in discussion with John Boyne about his novel Water (Doubleday), a story about one woman coming to terms with the demons of her past and finding a new path forward. Paula will also be joined by William Wall in discussion about Empty Bed Blues (New Island), a story exploring the intersection of friendship, love, language, debt and politics.

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© Chris Close

John Boyne is the author of fourteen novels for adults, six for younger readers, and a collection of short stories. His 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has sold more than 11 million copies worldwide and has been adapted for cinema, theatre, ballet, and opera. His many international bestsellers include The Heart’s Invisible Furies and A Ladder to the Sky. He has won four Irish Book Awards, including Author of the Year in 2022, along with a host of other international literary prizes. His novels are published in fifty-eight languages.

Kevin Curran is from Balbriggan, County Dublin, and has been a secondary school teacher in his hometown for over a decade. His first novel, Beatsploitation, appeared in 2013 bringing him national attention due to his depiction of Ireland’s new multicultural landscape. A second novel, Citizens, earned critical acclaim in 2016. His short stories have been published in major anthologies and literary journals such as The Stinging Fly, and he has also written non-fiction for the Guardian and The Observer. Kevin’s new novel, Youth, is published by Lilliput Press in June 2023.

Olivia Fitzsimons is from Northern Ireland now living in County Wicklow with her husband and two children. Her debut novel, The Quiet Whispers Never Stop, published by John Murray, was shortlisted for the 2022 Kate O’Brien and Butler Literary Awards. She is a contributing editor for The Stinging Fly. Her writing has been awarded Literature Bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland and Northern Ireland, as well as residencies from Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris/Literature Ireland and The Dean Art Studios. Her fiction and essays have appeared in numerous publications including The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Banshee, and broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

© Adam Lowry

Anne Griffin is the author of the bestselling novels The Island of Longing, Listening Still and When All Is Said. Anne received the Irish Book Awards Newcomer of the Year 2019. She has been longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the John McGahern Annual Book Prize and the RSL Christopher Bland Prize. Anne is published in twenty-five territories.

Photo by: Kate Donaldson

Michael Magee is the fiction editor of The Tangerine and a graduate of the PhD Creative Writing programme at Queen’s University, Belfast. His writing has appeared in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, The Lifeboat and in The 32: AN Anthology of Working Class Writing. Close to Home is Magee’s first novel and he lives in Belfast.

Una Mannion was born in Philadelphia and lives in County Sligo Ireland. She is the author of A Crooked Tree, and has won numerous prizes for her work including the Hennessy Emerging Poetry Award and the Doolin, Cúirt, Allingham and Ambit short story prizes. Her work has been published in the Guardian, the Irish Times, The Lonely Crowd, Crannóg and Bare Fiction. She edits The Cormorant, a broadsheet of prose and poetry.

Photo © Liz Kirwan

William Wall is the author of six previous novels, five volumes of poetry and three collections of short stories. His work has won many awards, including the Virginia Faulkner Award and the Raymond Carver Award. In 2017, he was the first European to win the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and, in 2021–2022, he was the first Poet Laureate for Cork City. His novel This is the Country was longlisted for the Booker Prize. William and his wife Liz now spend most of their time in the idyllic Italian fishing port of Camogli, this is the location of his latest novel Empty Bed Blues.

Breda Brown is presenter of the Inside Books podcast and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Irish Writers Centre. She also reviews crime novels for the Sunday Independent. Her day job is Co-founder and Communications Director of Unique Media, a strategic communications advisory firm.

Picture: Bríd O’Donovan

Lisa McInerney is the author of three novels: The Glorious Heresies, The Blood Miracles and The Rules of Revelation. She has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the RSL Encore Award and the Premio Edoardo Kihlgren for European literature. She is published in 11 languages. In 2022, she was appointed editor of The Stinging Fly.

Paula Shields is a writer, researcher and interviewer. An arts journalist since the 1990s, she has worked in London and Dublin in print, TV, and now radio – on the arts show, Arena, on RTE Radio 1. Other professional highlights include making the IFTA award-winning RTE TV documentary, Fairytale of New York, in 2017, and judging the 2017 and 2018 Irish Times Theatre Awards.