Podcasts about irish fiction

Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, three short story collections and several works of nonfiction. He has written countless articles, plays, an opera libretto and a collection of poetry, and been a finalist for the Booker Prize multiple times He is perhaps best known for his novel Brooklyn, which was made into a movie that was nominated for three Oscars. Set in the middle of the 20th century, Brooklyn is about Eilis Lacey who leaves her small town in Ireland for New York. After building a life there, she is drawn back home and has to choose where she wants to forge her future. Tóibín opens his lecture with the moment of his father's wake in his childhood home in which he hears, as a child, the real life story that would later inspire his character of Elis Lacey. From there, Tóibín's talk is a captivating story of all of his stories, and a kind of master class for writing a novel. He is a writer known for rendering the quiet intimacies between characters, revealing powerful emotional undercurrents and their deep longings.  He is a writer who makes you care about the tiny details of a life – the buttons on a coat or the emotional reverberations of a silence. In this talk, he illuminates his craft, and pulls the curtain back on how his own life shaped his most famous novels. Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island, an Oprah's Book Club Pick; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; and Nora Webster; as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and was named the 2022–2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. He was shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize. He was also awarded the Bodley Medal, the Würth Prize for European Literature, and the Prix Femina spécial for his body of work.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne tells Ruth McKee about the books which have been important in her life, through childhood, love, and loss—and talks about how her writing practice has evolved.  Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, The Laureate for Irish Fiction, writes in both Irish and English. A member of Aosdána, she is Writer Fellow at UCD, where she teaches MA-level Creative Writing. She has been the recipient of many literary awards, most recently the Pen Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature, and a Hennessy Hall of Fame Award, many Oireachtas Awards for her writing in Irish, and the Stuart Parker Award for Drama. Her novel, The Dancers Dancing, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2000. She has published several collections of short stories, the most recent being Selected Stories (Blackstaff 2023) and Fáínne Geal and Lae (Clo Iar Chonnacht 2023).

In her first public event as the fourth Laureate for Irish Fiction 2025-2028, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne discussed her writing career to date and her role as Laureate with Niall MacMonagle. This event was recorded at  the National Library of Ireland on 16 September 2025.

Colm Tóibín is one of Ireland's most celebrated writers. He's the author of eleven novels, including Brooklyn, The Master, and The Magician. Known for his quiet emotion and vivid storytelling, Tóibín is also a playwright, essayist, and recent Laureate for Irish Fiction. His new release, Ship in Full Sail, a rich collection of essays and lectures, is available now.Brought to you by Ballymore.Follow the show:Instagram: @bookshelfpodcastTikTok: @bookshelfpodcastFollow Ryan:Instagram: @instatubridy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us a textIn this episode we invite Colm Tóibín to the breakfast table to discuss his new book A Ship in Full Sail: The Laureate Lectures and Other Writings. The book collects the blogs he wrote during his term as Laureate for Irish Fiction,  one written each month on topics as diverse as  Artificial Intelligence, reading Ulysses, the discomfort of Salman Rushdie in the wilds of County Dublin, Bob Dylan in concert, a life of Thom Gunn and the author's role in a campaign to save the House of The Dead. Also included are essays on abiding interests –  music and the visual arts. It's a wide-ranging collection full of fascinating insights into the mind of one of Ireland's beloved writers.This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry' from The Hare's Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.Support the show

In the final episode of the 2025 season, Mike talks with 2025 Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction recipient Anne Enright about J.G. Farrell's 1970 novel, Troubles. Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has published three collections of stories, collected as Yesterday's Weather, one book of non-fiction, Making Babies, and eight novels, including The Gathering, which was the Irish Novel of the Year and won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, The Forgotten Waltz, which was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and The Green Road, which won the Irish Novel of the year and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Her work has been nominated for the Women's Prize five times. From 2015 to 2018 she was the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. Her latest, The Wren, The Wren is the winner of the 2024 Writer's Prize for Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the final episode of the 2025 season, Mike talks with 2025 Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction recipient Anne Enright about J.G. Farrell's 1970 novel, Troubles. Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has published three collections of stories, collected as Yesterday's Weather, one book of non-fiction, Making Babies, and eight novels, including The Gathering, which was the Irish Novel of the Year and won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, The Forgotten Waltz, which was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and The Green Road, which won the Irish Novel of the year and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Her work has been nominated for the Women's Prize five times. From 2015 to 2018 she was the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. Her latest, The Wren, The Wren is the winner of the 2024 Writer's Prize for Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Laureate for Irish Fiction

Samuel Beckett and Recent Irish Fiction: A Comparative Study (Routledge, 2025) considers Samuel Beckett's fiction and drama as major aesthetic and thematic influences on the work of Irish authors Eimear McBride, Keith Ridgway, Emma Donoghue, and Kevin Barry in the post-crash period of 2009-2015. Through cross-comparisons between the aesthetics and form of Beckett's Trilogy, Mercier and Camier, Footfalls and Not I, and those of a range of post-crash Irish novels including Beatlebone, Hawthorn and Child, Room, and A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, this book establishes Beckett's continuing influence on Irish fiction. With particular reference to these newer authors' treatment of scarcity, trauma, indeterminism, gender and sexuality, and confinement in the context of major societal changes and traumas in Irish society since 2009, topics include the imposition of austerity, collapse of faith in institutions, and the increasing recognition of LGBTQIA+ and reproductive rights. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Samuel Beckett and Recent Irish Fiction: A Comparative Study (Routledge, 2025) considers Samuel Beckett's fiction and drama as major aesthetic and thematic influences on the work of Irish authors Eimear McBride, Keith Ridgway, Emma Donoghue, and Kevin Barry in the post-crash period of 2009-2015. Through cross-comparisons between the aesthetics and form of Beckett's Trilogy, Mercier and Camier, Footfalls and Not I, and those of a range of post-crash Irish novels including Beatlebone, Hawthorn and Child, Room, and A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, this book establishes Beckett's continuing influence on Irish fiction. With particular reference to these newer authors' treatment of scarcity, trauma, indeterminism, gender and sexuality, and confinement in the context of major societal changes and traumas in Irish society since 2009, topics include the imposition of austerity, collapse of faith in institutions, and the increasing recognition of LGBTQIA+ and reproductive rights. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Samuel Beckett and Recent Irish Fiction: A Comparative Study (Routledge, 2025) considers Samuel Beckett's fiction and drama as major aesthetic and thematic influences on the work of Irish authors Eimear McBride, Keith Ridgway, Emma Donoghue, and Kevin Barry in the post-crash period of 2009-2015. Through cross-comparisons between the aesthetics and form of Beckett's Trilogy, Mercier and Camier, Footfalls and Not I, and those of a range of post-crash Irish novels including Beatlebone, Hawthorn and Child, Room, and A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, this book establishes Beckett's continuing influence on Irish fiction. With particular reference to these newer authors' treatment of scarcity, trauma, indeterminism, gender and sexuality, and confinement in the context of major societal changes and traumas in Irish society since 2009, topics include the imposition of austerity, collapse of faith in institutions, and the increasing recognition of LGBTQIA+ and reproductive rights. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Samuel Beckett and Recent Irish Fiction: A Comparative Study (Routledge, 2025) considers Samuel Beckett's fiction and drama as major aesthetic and thematic influences on the work of Irish authors Eimear McBride, Keith Ridgway, Emma Donoghue, and Kevin Barry in the post-crash period of 2009-2015. Through cross-comparisons between the aesthetics and form of Beckett's Trilogy, Mercier and Camier, Footfalls and Not I, and those of a range of post-crash Irish novels including Beatlebone, Hawthorn and Child, Room, and A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, this book establishes Beckett's continuing influence on Irish fiction. With particular reference to these newer authors' treatment of scarcity, trauma, indeterminism, gender and sexuality, and confinement in the context of major societal changes and traumas in Irish society since 2009, topics include the imposition of austerity, collapse of faith in institutions, and the increasing recognition of LGBTQIA+ and reproductive rights. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

The December Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Elaine Feeney about his book 'How to Build a Boat'. “Elaine Feeney's second novel, set in a small, fictional Irish town on the west coast, tells the story of Jamie, a boy who seeks to connect with his dead mother. ‘Feeney's prose,' The New York Times has written, ‘is both careful and relaxed — detailed in its description of place and character and of the effortful human urge to find order in the natural world.'” — Colm Tóibín Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/uploadedFiles/wwwartscouncilie/Content/Arts_in_Ireland/Literature/Laureate_for_Irish_Fiction/Art%20of%20Reading%20Book%20Club%202024.pdf

The November Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Michael Magee about his book 'Close to Home'. “Michael Magee's first novel deals with the Troubles as both legacy and aftermath. At its centre is Sean who has returned to Belfast. The book has been described by The Guardian as ‘a staggeringly humane and tender evocation of class, violence and the challenge of belonging in a world that seems designed to keep you watching from the sidelines.'” — Colm Tóibín Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The October Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Caoilinn Hughes about her novel ‘The Alternatives'. “Caoilinn Hughes's novel deals with the lives of four brilliant sisters, lives that have been deeply scarred by the death of their parents. As Hernan Diaz has written, this is ‘a tale about sisterhood, a novel of ideas, a chronicle of our collective follies, a requiem for our agonizing species… in a prose full of gorgeous surprises…glows with intelligence, compassion, and beauty.'” — Colm Tóibín Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

Alice Ryan, writer and grand daughter of the late Mary Lavin and Colm Tóibín, Laureate for Irish Fiction, discusses the legacy of Mary Lavin who today becomes the first female Irish writer to have a public space in Dublin named in her honour.

“Paul Lynch's novel, winner of the 2023 Booker Prize, is set in the near future in a real Dublin in which a totalitarian regime has come to power. ‘If there was ever a crucial book for our current times,' The Guardian has written, ‘it's Paul Lynch's Prophet Song.'” Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

Colm Tóibín, Laureate for Irish Fiction

The August Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Dermot Bolger about his novel 'The Lonely Sea and Sky' “The novel tells the story of the rescue by a small Irish boat of 168 German sailors during World War II. The narrator is Jack Roche, a 14-year-old Wexford lad whose father has been killed at sea. Part historical fiction, part coming-ofage narrative, this is a perceptive and exciting novel about life at sea as a way of dramatizing human relations at their most intense.” — Colm Tóibín Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

“Set in 1994, The Coast Road tells the story of two women— Izzy and Colette. Colette has left her husband and sons for a married man in Dublin. When she returns to her home in County Donegal, her husband, Shaun, a successful businessman, denies her access to her children. ‘The last great book I read,' the actress Gillian Anderson has said. ‘It will no doubt be a bestseller.'" Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

A conversation about Irish fiction writers. Featuring John Boyne, Sally Rooney, Oisín McKenna and Megan Nolan. Broadcast on OAR 105.4FM Dunedin oar.org.nz

The June Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Belind McKeon about her novel 'Solace' "In her compelling debut novel, Solace,' Anna Fogarty wrote in The Irish Times in 2011, ‘Belinda McKeon succeeds in subtly reconfiguring and updating the archetypal story of a son's quarrel with his father. In her hands, it becomes a profound and exacting conjuration with the pyscho-social shifts taking place in contemporary Ireland.” Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The May Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Megan Nolan about her novel 'Ordinary Human Failings'. "Megan Nolan's novel tells the story of the Green family who move from Ireland to London in the early 1990s. 'Where Nolan really excels is in the delineation of complex, sometimes contradictory interior states, the water we all swim in and call "reality",' writes The Financial Times." - Colm Tóibín Megan Nolan was born in 1990 in Waterford, Ireland and is currently based in London. Her essays and reviews have been published by The New York Times, White Review, The Guardian and Frieze amongst others. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2021 and was the recipient of a Betty Trask Award, shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second novel, Ordinary Human Failings, was published in 2023 and is shortlisted for the inaugural Nero Book Awards, for fiction and longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

''His generation's most gifted writer of love's complicated, contradictory power'' (Los Angeles Times), Colm Tóibín is the author of an impressive list of novels, short stories, essays, plays, poetry, and criticism. His novels The Master, The Testament of Mary, and Brooklyn were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and the last was adapted into a popular BAFTA Award-winning film of the same name. The Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, Tóibín earned an Irish PEN Award and was named the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland, among scores of other honors. Set 20 years after the events of the international bestseller Brooklyn, Long Island finds the enigmatic émigré protagonist of that book alone in her marriage and facing the travails of middle age and unfulfilled dreams. Because you love Author Events, please make a donation to keep our podcasts free for everyone. THANK YOU! (recorded 5/13/2024)

Irish novelist Anne Enright is the author of seven novels, including The Gathering, winner of the Booker Prize in 2007. Her 2012 novel The Forgotten Waltz won the Andre Carnegie Medal for Fiction and her novel The Green Road won The Irish Novel of the Year in 2015, the same year that she was appointed as the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. Her latest novel The Wren, The Wren has been shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024.Anne tells John Wilson how her childhood home in the suburbs of Dublin, and holidays spent at the Pollock Holes in Kilkee inform her writing. She recalls her book-devouring household and first reading Ulysses while on a cycling holiday at the age of 14. The play Top Girls by Caryl Churchill was also a creative influence, particularly in the way Churchill wrote dialogue for women who were at the time, so underrepresented on stage. Anne also cites the influence of the writer Angela Carter, both as a writer of contemporary fiction and as her tutor and mentor at the University of East Anglia. Producer: Edwina PitmanArchive and readings used:Extract from The Gathering, read by Anne Enright Extract from The Wren, The Wren, read by Charlotte Pyke Extract from Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, BBC, 1992

On 3 November at the Seamus Heaney HomePlace Bellaghy, Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín delivered his second annual lecture entitled A Dream on Wings: Poetry and the Underworld. It featured poetry readings by Cathy Belton and musical performance by Martin Hayes. Colm Tóibín's lecture charts poetry written about the underworld and traces a line going from Ovid through to contemporary poets including Seamus Heaney and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. Colm Tóibín is the third Laureate for Irish Fiction and was awarded the honour by the Arts Council in early 2022. The Laureate for Irish Fiction promotes Irish literature nationally and internationally and encourages the public to engage with high quality Irish Fiction. The Laureate for Irish Fiction is an initiative of the Arts Council. More details about Colm Tóibín's public programme as Laureate can be found here: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction-2022-2024/

Ian McMillan presents a special extended interview with acclaimed Irish novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet Colm Tóibín, who's been described as one of Ireland's finest writers. Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels including Brooklyn, which won the 2009 Costa novel award, and The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; as well as two short story collections. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize Tóibín was made the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024. In 2022, he published his first collection of poems, Vinegar Hill. Producer: Cecile Wright

The former inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction, Anne Enright won the 2008 Man Booker Prize for her novel The Gathering, which revolves around the tragic death of a young man inside a large family, told from the perspective of his grieving sister. Enright's new title, The Wren, The Wren, has been called perhaps her best novel yet. *This interview originally aired Feb. 3, 2008. Please note it contains some discussion of suicide.

Bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author, Anne Enright, spoke to me about eagles and moles, the interior engineering of a novel, her love of Irish poetry, and her latest THE WREN, THE WREN. Anne Enright won the Man Booker Prize and the Irish Fiction Award for her novel The Gathering. She has also been awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards, and was the first Laureate for Irish Fiction (2015-2018). Her latest novel The Wren, the Wren, was named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by TIME, The Millions, Literary Hub, and others, and is described as the story of “... three generations of … women who must contend with inheritances―of poetic wonder and of abandonment by a man who is lauded in public and carelessly selfish at home.” The New York Times called it, "... a powerful, thoughtful book by one of the great living writers on the subject of family," and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan said of the book, “The Wren, the Wren is an electrifying romp through language itself―its dizzying possibilities and satisfactions―led by one the most gifted writers working in English today." Anne Enright has also published two books of short stories, her essays on literary themes have appeared in the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books, and she writes for the books pages of The Irish Times and The Guardian. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Anne Enright and I discussed:  The moment of burnout that changed her career How she used to be a night owl scribe Why you shouldn't over-panic, or over-plan The fallacies of impostor syndrome and inspiration How to create a fictional poet out of thin air Taking a long look at James Joyce across the table And a lot more! Show Notes: Anne Enright - Wikipedia The Wren, the Wren: A Novel by Anne Enright (Amazon) Anne Enright Amazon Author Page Book Review: ‘The Wren, the Wren,' by Anne Enright - The New York Times Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

5x15 welcomes Colm Tóibín, novelist, critic, essayist and one of the most highly acclaimed writers of our time. In his new essay collection A Guest at the Feast, Tóibín traverses life in all its complexity, capturing moments that are both melancholy and amusing, rich and strange. Travelling between the streets of Buenos Aires and a deserted Venice, and the works of writers such as John McGahern and Marilynne Robinson, these essays uncover the places where life and fiction overlap. Don't miss the chance to hear this most erudite and important storyteller, live in conversation with award-winning poet and author Seán Hewitt. Praise for Colm Tóibín and A Guest at the Feast 'The clarity of the novelist's descriptive ability shines through essays on topics ranging from his treatment for cancer to the joys of an empty Venice . . . On every subject, Tóibín's writing is what people these days inevitably describe as nuanced, a word that has become a kind of shorthand for expressing a person's rare ability to understand . . . the foibles of others' - Rachel Cooke, Observer, Book of the Day 'I love everything Colm Tóibín has written' - Nicola Sturgeon, New Statesman 'I wanted to read out loud, to fully savour writing that is so careful and so lyrical' - Laura Hackett, Sunday Times Colm Tóibín was born in Enniscorthy in 1955. He is the author of ten novels, including The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster, as well as two story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named as the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin and New York. Seán Hewitt is the author of the memoir All Down Darkness Wide, winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature (2022), and the poetry collection Tongues of Fire, winner of the Laurel Prize (2021). He lives in Dublin, where he teaches at Trinity College. With thanks for your support for 5x15 online! Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories

Anne Enright is the multi award winning Irish author of seven novels, collections of short stories, a non-fiction work about the birth of her two children, and she was the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction. The Gathering, won the Booker Prize in 2007 - about a woman trying to make sense of her brother's suicide as the large, dysfunctional family gather for his funeral. Anne Enright's latest book also shines a strong light on family relationships. In The Wren,The Wren, a famous Irish poet leaves his wife and two daughters - that abandonment rippling through the life of one of his daughters, and in turn, her daughter. The book has won high praise - fellow Irish writer Sally Rooney, author of Normal People, calls it "magnificent", while The Times calls Enright "one of our greatest living novelists". She speaks with Kathryn Ryan from her home in Dublin.

Following on from the success of her 2020 novel Actress, Anne Enright is back with her latest book The Wren, The Wren. It's a multi-generational story, exploring family trauma and the love between mother and daughter, told through three members of the same family: Nell, Carmel and Phil. In this episode, Enright speaks to Róisín Ingle about the inspiration behind the story, her foray into poetry and the novel's omission from this year's Booker long list. They also reflect on Enright's time as the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction, her childhood growing up the youngest of five and her “stormy” teenage years. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this interview Mary M. McGlynn, Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, discusses her new book Broken Irelands: Literary Form in Post-Crash Irish Fiction (Syracuse University Press, 2022). While the national narrative coming out of Ireland since the 2008 economic crisis has been relentlessly sanguine, fiction has offered a more nuanced perspective from both well-established and emerging authors. In Broken Irelands, McGlynn examines Irish fiction of the post-crash era, addressing the proliferation of writing that downplays realistic and grammatical coherence. Noting that these traits have the effect of diminishing human agency, blurring questions of responsibility, and emphasizing emotion over rationality, McGlynn argues that they reflect and respond to social and economic conditions during the global economic crisis and its aftermath of recession, austerity, and precarity. Rather than focusing on overt discussions of the crash and recession, McGlynn explores how the dominance of an economic worldview, including a pervasive climate of financialized discourse, shapes the way stories are told. In the writing of such authors as Anne Enright, Colum McCann, Mike McCormack, and Lisa McInerney, McGlynn unpacks the ways that formal departures from realism through grammatical asymmetries like unconventional verb tenses, novel syntactic choices, and reliance on sentence fragments align with a cultural moment shaped by feelings of impotence and rhetorics of personal responsibility. Colleen English is a scholar of Irish and Romantic literature based at Loyola University Chicago. She co-convenes the Irish Studies Scholarly Seminar at the Newberry Library. On Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this interview Mary M. McGlynn, Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, discusses her new book Broken Irelands: Literary Form in Post-Crash Irish Fiction (Syracuse University Press, 2022). While the national narrative coming out of Ireland since the 2008 economic crisis has been relentlessly sanguine, fiction has offered a more nuanced perspective from both well-established and emerging authors. In Broken Irelands, McGlynn examines Irish fiction of the post-crash era, addressing the proliferation of writing that downplays realistic and grammatical coherence. Noting that these traits have the effect of diminishing human agency, blurring questions of responsibility, and emphasizing emotion over rationality, McGlynn argues that they reflect and respond to social and economic conditions during the global economic crisis and its aftermath of recession, austerity, and precarity. Rather than focusing on overt discussions of the crash and recession, McGlynn explores how the dominance of an economic worldview, including a pervasive climate of financialized discourse, shapes the way stories are told. In the writing of such authors as Anne Enright, Colum McCann, Mike McCormack, and Lisa McInerney, McGlynn unpacks the ways that formal departures from realism through grammatical asymmetries like unconventional verb tenses, novel syntactic choices, and reliance on sentence fragments align with a cultural moment shaped by feelings of impotence and rhetorics of personal responsibility. Colleen English is a scholar of Irish and Romantic literature based at Loyola University Chicago. She co-convenes the Irish Studies Scholarly Seminar at the Newberry Library. On Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In this interview Mary M. McGlynn, Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, discusses her new book Broken Irelands: Literary Form in Post-Crash Irish Fiction (Syracuse University Press, 2022). While the national narrative coming out of Ireland since the 2008 economic crisis has been relentlessly sanguine, fiction has offered a more nuanced perspective from both well-established and emerging authors. In Broken Irelands, McGlynn examines Irish fiction of the post-crash era, addressing the proliferation of writing that downplays realistic and grammatical coherence. Noting that these traits have the effect of diminishing human agency, blurring questions of responsibility, and emphasizing emotion over rationality, McGlynn argues that they reflect and respond to social and economic conditions during the global economic crisis and its aftermath of recession, austerity, and precarity. Rather than focusing on overt discussions of the crash and recession, McGlynn explores how the dominance of an economic worldview, including a pervasive climate of financialized discourse, shapes the way stories are told. In the writing of such authors as Anne Enright, Colum McCann, Mike McCormack, and Lisa McInerney, McGlynn unpacks the ways that formal departures from realism through grammatical asymmetries like unconventional verb tenses, novel syntactic choices, and reliance on sentence fragments align with a cultural moment shaped by feelings of impotence and rhetorics of personal responsibility. Colleen English is a scholar of Irish and Romantic literature based at Loyola University Chicago. She co-convenes the Irish Studies Scholarly Seminar at the Newberry Library. On Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this interview Mary M. McGlynn, Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, discusses her new book Broken Irelands: Literary Form in Post-Crash Irish Fiction (Syracuse University Press, 2022). While the national narrative coming out of Ireland since the 2008 economic crisis has been relentlessly sanguine, fiction has offered a more nuanced perspective from both well-established and emerging authors. In Broken Irelands, McGlynn examines Irish fiction of the post-crash era, addressing the proliferation of writing that downplays realistic and grammatical coherence. Noting that these traits have the effect of diminishing human agency, blurring questions of responsibility, and emphasizing emotion over rationality, McGlynn argues that they reflect and respond to social and economic conditions during the global economic crisis and its aftermath of recession, austerity, and precarity. Rather than focusing on overt discussions of the crash and recession, McGlynn explores how the dominance of an economic worldview, including a pervasive climate of financialized discourse, shapes the way stories are told. In the writing of such authors as Anne Enright, Colum McCann, Mike McCormack, and Lisa McInerney, McGlynn unpacks the ways that formal departures from realism through grammatical asymmetries like unconventional verb tenses, novel syntactic choices, and reliance on sentence fragments align with a cultural moment shaped by feelings of impotence and rhetorics of personal responsibility. Colleen English is a scholar of Irish and Romantic literature based at Loyola University Chicago. She co-convenes the Irish Studies Scholarly Seminar at the Newberry Library. On Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

In this interview Mary M. McGlynn, Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, discusses her new book Broken Irelands: Literary Form in Post-Crash Irish Fiction (Syracuse University Press, 2022). While the national narrative coming out of Ireland since the 2008 economic crisis has been relentlessly sanguine, fiction has offered a more nuanced perspective from both well-established and emerging authors. In Broken Irelands, McGlynn examines Irish fiction of the post-crash era, addressing the proliferation of writing that downplays realistic and grammatical coherence. Noting that these traits have the effect of diminishing human agency, blurring questions of responsibility, and emphasizing emotion over rationality, McGlynn argues that they reflect and respond to social and economic conditions during the global economic crisis and its aftermath of recession, austerity, and precarity. Rather than focusing on overt discussions of the crash and recession, McGlynn explores how the dominance of an economic worldview, including a pervasive climate of financialized discourse, shapes the way stories are told. In the writing of such authors as Anne Enright, Colum McCann, Mike McCormack, and Lisa McInerney, McGlynn unpacks the ways that formal departures from realism through grammatical asymmetries like unconventional verb tenses, novel syntactic choices, and reliance on sentence fragments align with a cultural moment shaped by feelings of impotence and rhetorics of personal responsibility. Colleen English is a scholar of Irish and Romantic literature based at Loyola University Chicago. She co-convenes the Irish Studies Scholarly Seminar at the Newberry Library. On Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

The March Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Philip Ó Ceallaigh about his book 'Trouble'. “Philip Ó Ceallaigh is a brilliant, uncompromising and ambitious writer who has long been resident in Bucharest. Of his collection of stories ‘Trouble', the Los Angeles Review of Books wrote: ‘Ó Ceallaigh writes with such immediacy, such confessional intensity, that when the narrator leans in close and says, “Look — there lies trouble,” it is impossible to look away.” - Colm Tóibín Philip Ó Ceallaigh has published over fifty short stories, most of them gathered in his three collections. The most recent is Trouble, from the Stinging Fly Press. He has been described by John Banville as “a master” of the short story form and named by Rob Doyle as his “favourite living writer of short stories”. His work has appeared in Granta, The Los Angeles Review of Books and The Irish Times and has been translated into over a dozen languages. He was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for his first book, Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse. He is also an essayist and critic with a particular interest in Jewish-European history, and his translation of Mihail Sebastian's interwar novel For Two Thousand Years was published by Penguin Classics. He lives in Bucharest, Romania. Read more about the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme here: www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction-2022-2024/

And novelist and laureate for Irish Fiction, Colm Tóibín discussed the album that inspired him.. Blue by Joni Mitchell.

Laureate for Irish Fiction, Colm Tóibín spoke to Matt about his latest book 'A Guest at the Feast', which is a collection of essays about his own life. Catch the full chat by pressing the 'Play' button on this page.

In this special Bloomsday conversation with Carolina P. Amador-Moreno, Nuala O'Connor discusses the research for her novel Nora (2021); her rewritings of Joyce's letters; her search for Nora Barnacle's voice; the difficulty of finding a balance between the flavour and authenticity of a language and just too many convoluted constructions; the beauty of Irish prose and how it is perceived in the US; and the language of her childhood and how she co-opts it in her fiction as a way to honour that language and her parents. Nuala O'Connor also reads a short excerpt from her novel Nora and introduces us to her new project about a historic maverick woman from Cork. 

Colm Tóibín, Author

Here Goes Nothing is the last in what Steve Toltz calls his trilogy of fear which began with A Fraction of the Whole. This latest book is narrated by a ghost who discovers there is an afterlife hierarchy and he is at the bottom. Also, Irish writer Audrey Magee on her second novel The Colony which is colonisation in microcosm and Toni Jordan's sixth novel, Dinner with the Schnabels, billed as a family dramedy.

Here Goes Nothing is the last in what Steve Toltz calls his trilogy of fear which began with A Fraction of the Whole. This latest book is narrated by a ghost who discovers there is an afterlife hierarchy and he is at the bottom. Also, Irish writer Audrey Magee on her second novel The Colony which is colonisation in microcosm and Toni Jordan's sixth novel, Dinner with the Schnabels, billed as a family dramedy.

Colm Tóibín, author and the new laureate for Irish fiction joined Sean on the show today...

Caoilinn Hughes' deep dive into the 2008 Irish financial crisis and Jock Serong's investigation of a 19th century shipwreck.

Anne Enright's novel about the theatre, authors on writing the difficult second novel and Tommy Wieringa's obsession with small villages.

Rachel and Simon speak with the author Anne Enright. Anne has written two collections of stories, one book of non-fiction and six novels. “The Gathering”, which was published in 2007, won the Booker Prize; Anne has also received the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. In 2015 she was appointed the first Laureate for Irish Fiction and in 2018 she received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature. We spoke to Anne about creative writing programmes, her loathing of routine and writing “Actress” during the emergence of the #MeToo movement. penguin.co.uk/authors/1009089/anne-enright.html penguin.co.uk/books/1069718/the-gathering/9780099501633.html penguin.co.uk/books/1118568/actress/9781787332065.html You can find us online at alwaystakenotes.com, on Twitter @takenotesalways, and on Facebook at facebook.com/alwaystakenotes. Our crowdfunding page is patreon.com/alwaystakenotes. Always Take Notes is presented by Simon Akam and Rachel Lloyd, and produced by Nicola Kean. Our social media is run by Katy Lee. Our music is by Jessica Dannheisser and our logo was designed by James Edgar.

In Sebastian Barry's inaugural speech as Laureate for Irish Fiction earlier this year, he stated that Ireland was in a 'golden age of prose'. As Northern Irish writer Anna Burns scooped the Man Booker Prize for her novel Milkman last month, Front Row hears voices from the No Alibis bookstore in Belfast. We speak to former Irish Laureate and Booker Prize winner Anne Enright; Professor of Irish History and Literature, Roy Foster; award-winning, Belfast-born writer Lucy Caldwell; and writer, editor and journalist Sinead Gleeson. They discuss the renaissance in Irish writing, its roots in Irish storytelling and love of language, and how the border - now at the heart of the Brexit debate - is being written about by a new generation of writers, north and south.And Front Row exclusively announces the winner of this year's Hepworth Sculpture Prize, hearing live from the victor and from the Chief Curator of The Hepworth Wakefield, Andrew Bonacina. This year's shortlist includes Mona Hatoum, Michael Dean, Phillip Lai, Magali Reus, and Cerith Wyn Evans.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Sarah Johnson

Why does this small, rocky island have such outsize influence on world literature? Who is following in the footsteps of James Joyce, Frank O'Connor, and Edna O'Brien? Meet three members of an exciting new generation of Irish fiction writers: the author of a short story collection about small-town Irish life, a novelist whose latest work is a satirical take on the Irish banking crisis, and a novelist who explores the mysteries of narrative itself in an unconventional mystery novel.