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| Eoin Colfer, author of Artemis Fowl |
Guests include: Colin Barrett (Wild Houses, Young Skins), Kevin Barry (Night Boat to Tangier, Beatlebone), Deirdre Sullivan (Tangleweed & Brine, Savage Her Reply), Sophie White (Where I End, Corpsing), Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl), Sarah-Davis Goff (Last Ones Left Alive, Silent City, Tramp Press), Sarah Rees Brennan (In Other Lands, Long Live Evil), and, of course, the great Dave Rudden (Sister Wake, Knights of the Borrowed Dark) See below.
TUES. JUNE 2 - COLIN BARRETT acclaimed Irish-Canadian author known for his sharp, character-driven short stories and novels set in provincial Ireland. He gained international recognition for his debut short story collection, Young Skins, and his 2024 debut novel, Wild Houses, was longlisted for the Booker Prize.A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award; Winner of the Guardian First Book Award; Winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. "[Young Skins ]lives up to its laurels...exact and poetic...One sign of [Barrett's] striking maturity as a writer is that his characters stay in character...A clumsier writer might have made Arm (and other characters besides) an unconvincing juxtaposition of outward violence and inner sentimentality. Mr. Barrett makes him seamless and convincing: brutish but alive...Mr. Barrett does foundational things exceedingly well―structure, choices of (and switches in) perspective―without drawing attention to them. These are stories that are likely to be taught for their form...His judgment is better than authoritative; it is imaginative and enlarging."―New York Times
Read Colin's debut story, Let's Go Kill Ourselves, HERE. Read this Paris Review interview with Colin Barrett HERE. Read The Alps by Colin Barrett HERE.
WEDS. JUNE 3 - FERDIA MAC ANNA is a novelist, playwright, producer, director and editor of The Penguin Book of Comic Irish Writing. His novels include The Last of the High Kings (1991), The Ship Inspector (1995) and Cartoon City (2000). His films include All About Eva (2014) and DannyBoy (2020). In 1996, his coming of age story The Last of the High Kings was made into a movie starring Gabriel Byrne, Jared Leto and Christina Ricci. He formed Johnny Jurex & The Punk Pistols during the mad summer of 1976, one of Ireland's very first punk bands. (They only performed one concert, a legendary gig at UCD, causing a massive sensation.) Later he fronted Rocky De Valera & the Gravediggers, inspired by punk but rooted in 1950s rock. He went on to front The Rhythm Kings, which also toured extensively across Ireland. He has since detailed these eras in his writing, most notably his memoir The Last of the Bald Heads.He served as a fact-checker and script consultant for the 1987 novel The Commitments, working alongside author Roddy Doyle to ensure the authenticity of the Dublin rock band scenes and local slang before it was published.
Read this interview, "Perseverance and Self-Belief with Ferdia Mac Anna" HERE. Listen to Pool Hall Baby by Rocky & the Gravediggers HERE. Read this excerpt from Mac Anna's Cartoon City HERE.
WEDS, JUNE 3 - KEVIN BARRY is an acclaimed Irish author known for his stylistic prose, dark humor, and atmospheric storytelling, frequently focusing on the fringes of Irish society. He has written four novels—City of Bohane, Beatlebone, Night Boat to Tangier (longlisted for the Booker Prize), and The Heart in Winter—and multiple award-winning short story collections, often based in County Sligo, Ireland. His work has been called "dark, haunting, gorgeous" (NPR), “poetic... deft and generous" (New York Times), "meticulous, devastatingly vivid" (Guardian), "brutal and funny" (Paris Review), "dreamlike" (New Yorker). “Barry has a great gift for getting the atmospheres of sketchy social hubs in a few phosphorescent lines. . . . The sheer lyric intensity . . . brings its variously warped and ruined souls into being.”- New York Times Book Review.
Read "Fjord of Killary" HERE. "If Tarantino & Joyce had a baby..." Read a review of his novel, The Heart in Winter, HERE. Read this Paris Review interview with Kevin Barry HERE.
WEDS. JUNE 3 - DEIRDRE SULLIVAN has written eight acclaimed books for young adults, including Savage Her Reply and Tangleweed and Brine, a collection of feminist retellings of classic fairytales which won the Children’s Books Ireland Book of the Year Award in 2018 (and Young Adult Book of the Year in 2017. She lives in Galway.
Listen to Deirdre read an extract from Savage Her Reply HERE. Read this interview w. Deirdre Sullivan HERE. And this interview with Deirdre and Sarah Davis-Goff HERE.
WEDS. JUNE 3 - SOPHIE WHITE is an Irish author, essayist, and podcaster based in Dublin, renowned for her bestselling fiction and memoir work focusing on themes of modern life, mental health, and motherhood. She has written seven books, co-hosts the comedy podcasts The Creep Dive and Mother of Pod, and has previously held the position of writer-in-residence at both Dublin City University and the Museum of Literature Ireland. Her bestselling memoir, Corpsing, was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and the Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction. She co-hosts the chart-topping comedy podcast, The Creep Dive, and writes the Substack, Death Is Coming. Her book, the modern gothic horror novel and Shirley Jackson Award winner, Where I End, has been called "exquisite and disturbing" (Irish Times), "tremendous... brilliantly done" (Guardian), and "macabrely beautiful" (Irish Independent). Described by New York Times–bestselling author John Connolly as “perhaps the finest Irish horror novel of the 21st century,” Where I End is a "beautifully voiced, horrific novel... and one of the best novels of the year.” (Ellen Datlow, editor of The Best Horror of the Year).
Read this interview with Sophie White HERE. Read an excerpt from Where I End HERE.
THURS. JUNE 4 - EOIN COLFER is a renowned Irish author best known for his internationally bestselling Artemis Fowl fantasy series, which has been translated into over 40 languages, has sold some 25 million copies worldwide and is now a movie on Disney. A former primary school teacher, Colfer transitioned to full-time writing in 2001, blending humor and action across children’s fiction, graphic novels, and adult works."Colfer has done enormously, explosively well." (New York Times). "Artemis Fowl is pacy, playful, and very funny, an inventive mix of myth and modernity, magic and crime." (Time).
FRI. JUNE 5 - SARAH DAVIS-GOFF is co-founder of Tramp Press, an independent publisher whose successes include Solar Bones by Mike McCormack and Notes to Self by Emilie Pine. Her accalaimed debut novel Last Ones Left Alive was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and the Kate O'Brien Award, and won the Chrysalis Award. “Written in sparse, affecting prose, and reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, this is a fiercely feminist, highly imaginative novel.” (Guardian), “Davis-Goff writes language evocative of melancholy longing in a landscape both beautiful and brutal...With a bleak setting, waves of action, and immersive worldbuilding, Davis-Goff's debut successfully blends horror, lyrical prose, and feminist themes.” (Kirkus), “It is not only the distinctly Irish element, however, but the immense quality of the writing that stands this novel a clear head and shoulders above the rest. It's as much an exploration of inexpressible grief and loss as it is a rocket-paced page-turner, as much a coming-of-age story as it is a testament of resilience in impossible circumstances.' (Irish Independent), "A zombie novel with a Celtic twist…Davis-Goff’s painstaking account of the courage and resourcefulness of these three women dominates the first part of the book, but their solitary ordeal preludes a much grander unfolding of female empowerment, in which they must join forces with the banshees, a company of women who set out to defeat the skrake―and other monstrous beings―and give humanity another chance.” (BookPage)
Read this Los Angeles Review of books article on Sarah HERE. Read an excerpt from The Last Ones Left Alive HERE.SAT. JUNE 6 = SARAH REESE BRENNAN - was born and raised in Ireland by the sea. After world travel and surviving stage four cancer, she settled there in the shadow of a three-hundred-year-old library. Her debut fantasy novel for adults, LONG LIVE EVIL, the tale of a young woman who walks into her favorite fantasy novel and unites the villains in a wicked plot, came out 2024 and was an instant #1 Sunday Times bestseller, #15 USA Today bestseller, Locus recommended read and on two New York Times lists, Best of Fantasy and Best of Romance. ALL HAIL CHAOS, the sequel to LONG LIVE EVIL, is coming soon. Before her cancer career break, she was the bestselling, award-winning author of young adult fiction including the Demon’s Lexicon trilogy, the romantic Gothic Lynburn Legacy series and fantasy standalone In Other Lands, the story of the crankiest nerd who ever fell into a magical land, which was a Lodestar finalist. She wrote the tie-in novel series for the hit Netflix show, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and she wrote "Witch House," featuring Wanda Maximoff, for Women of Marvel #1.
Read an interview with Sarah HERE. Read an excerpt from In Other Lands HERE.