Irish playwright Abbie Spallen wins $150,000 prizeCo Down woman wins Windham-Campbell Prize, one of world’s richest literary awardsTue Mar 01 2016 - 07:34
Gavin McCrea: ‘when I finished John McGahern’s Memoir, I wept for an entire day’On learning how to deal with good reviews: ‘Because I spend a lot of my (writing) time enacting self-doubt and reproach, it can be difficult to trust praise when it comes’Sun Feb 28 2016 - 11:17
Kevin Curran: ‘writers should be writing against power’‘Not one big name in Irish literature has even attempted to gauge the feelings on the street and engage with contemporary social realism without sentimentalising it’Wed Feb 24 2016 - 10:58
Barney Devlin, blacksmith immortalised by Seamus Heaney, dies aged 96Tributes to man who inspired ‘The Forge’ and ‘Midnight Anvil’Fri Feb 19 2016 - 10:54
Greenbean Novel Fair 2016 finalists announcedJudges Anthony Glavin, Martina Devlin and Margaret Hayes have selected 12 aspiring novelists to meet publishers and agents at an Irish Writers Centre event next monthThu Feb 04 2016 - 15:08
Expecto Patronum! Harry Potter fans summon up their favourite spellTop 10 spells and what they do – your Harry Potter Book Night cut-out-and-keep / copy-and-paste guideThu Feb 04 2016 - 11:11
Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea: The Irish Times Book Club title for FebruaryThis acclaimed debut novel is based on the true but little-known story of an illiterate Irishwoman from a Manchester slum who was Friedrich Engels’ common-law wifeMon Feb 01 2016 - 16:01
Terry Wogan interview: ‘I’m a child of the Pale. I think I was born to succeed here’In this interview first published in 2007, Ireland’s most successful broadcaster, who died today, discusses his career, Ireland, the Troubles and identity: ‘I’m an effete, urban Irishman. I was a West Brit from the start’Sun Jan 31 2016 - 10:47
Soul mining: a brilliant seam of compressed and darkly glittering storiesThomas Morris’s characters scrabble to survive emotionally and spiritually in a post-heroic, soulless world, where cirrhosis is likelier than silicosis to undo themThu Jan 28 2016 - 07:00
Write like Hemingway, a TCD revolution series and Battle of the BookclubsRob Doyle book launch; Penny Dreadful shortlist; London literary evening; and an After Frankenstein competitionTue Jan 19 2016 - 17:25
Improve on Kevin McAleer’s WB Yeats meme: the winnerCongratulations to Claire Dempsey, whose reworking of the first stanza of In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz most impressed our judgesFri Jan 15 2016 - 12:00
David Bowie: Irish writers pay tributeJulian Gough, Joseph O’Connor, Edna O’Brien, Roddy Doyle, Eimear McBride, Hugo Hamilton, John Kelly, John McAuliffe and many others pay tribute to a musical geniusTue Jan 12 2016 - 15:21
2015 sales figures make pleasant reading for Irish booksellers and publishersThe Girl on the Train tops charts, with Anne Enright, Joe Duffy, Jim McGuinness, Colm Tóibín, Irelandopedia in top 10 and Irish market up 10.8% in value and 4.4% in volumeFri Jan 08 2016 - 17:33
In praise of Aidan Higgins: six Irish writers and his publisher pay tributeJohn Banville, Colm Tóibín, Rosita Sweetman, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Rob Doyle, George O’Brien and publisher John O’Brien salute the great Irish writer, who died last weekMon Jan 04 2016 - 10:13
Father Ted gift-wrapped: comedy gold, the frankly incensed and mirthI hear confessions of Father Ted co-creator Arthur Mathews, Fr Jack, Fr Dougal, Fr Damo, Fr Stone, Fr Ziggy, Eoin McLove and Terry McNamee, plus more secret lives, why some people hated Ted and miscellaneous TedfoolerySat Dec 26 2015 - 06:00
Danielle McLaughlin: ‘I think we need different books at different times’Our Book Club author on Eimear McBride, Maud Gonne McBride, Elena Ferrante, Wide Sargasso Sea and why dead people, naturally, are her dream dinner party guestsMon Dec 21 2015 - 11:50
Anne Enright’s The Green Road wins top prize at Irish Book AwardsJoe Duffy, Sara Baume, Jim McGuinness, Louise O’Neill, Donal Ryan, Sinéad Gleeson and Niall Breslin among winners at Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards 2015Wed Nov 25 2015 - 23:00
Frankie Gaffney’s advice to writers: ‘give up the booze and break some rules’‘My aim in Dublin Seven was to present a character whose very life and death is seen by society at large as not worth caring about: the young, working-class male’Mon Nov 23 2015 - 16:04
Danielle McLaughlin’s Dinosaurs on Other Planets: The Irish Times Book Club‘This is not a debut in the usual sense: a promise of greater things to come. There is no need to ask what Danielle McLaughlin will do next, she has done it already’: Anne EnrightMon Nov 23 2015 - 12:00
Anne Enright and Sara Baume on Costa awards shortlist£30,000 overall prize and £5,000 category prizes to be announced in JanuaryTue Nov 17 2015 - 19:30
Louise Beech: I always write physically at my desk; in my head I write everywhereMy novel was inspired by sharing an incredible true story with my then 10-year-old daughter when she refused her life-saving injections. She taught me about voiceMon Nov 16 2015 - 11:59
An Irishman’s Diary on Martin Doyle, the Victoria Cross winner who joined the IRAA tale of conflicting and overlapping loyaltiesTue Nov 10 2015 - 01:01
Picador acquires two novels from Irish writer Alan McMonagle‘Not since Pat McCabe’s The Butcher Boy have I fallen so in love with such a distinctly unreliable and hilariously imaginative child narrator’ says publisherFri Nov 06 2015 - 16:00
Sara Baume at UL; Neil Hegarty turns to fiction; Patrick Gale in BelfastAdrian McKinty signs on wavy line; Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer; Peter McDonald at TCD; Allingham FestivalThu Nov 05 2015 - 17:00
Big names on Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards 2015 shortlistBelinda McKeon, Nuala O’Connor, Anne Enright, Paul Murray, Kevin Barry and Edna O’Brien shortlisted for novel of the yearWed Nov 04 2015 - 11:30
Sara Baume awarded Rooney Prize for Irish LiteratureAuthor of Spill Simmer Falter Wither has also won Davy Byrnes Award and Hennessy New Irish Writer Award and been longlisted for Guardian First Book AwardMon Oct 19 2015 - 18:00
Terry Wogan: Out of shot at last?Terry Wogan is officially retired, but there’s no dozing by the wireless for the former BBC radio personality. He has just published his first novel, a semi-autobiographical, semi-satirical look back at his early days as a lowly Dublin bank clerkSat Oct 10 2015 - 05:00
Louise O’Neill: ‘I try and constantly cut back on the excess in my writing’‘Writing is the way in which I can make sense of the world. I always say that I feel like a shadow, a spectre at the feast when I am not writing. I write myself back into existence’Fri Oct 02 2015 - 11:07
IFTA televison awards shortlist revealedChris O’Dowd, Sharon Horgan, Brendan O’Carroll and Imelda May in running for awardsFri Oct 02 2015 - 09:00
Tore Renberg: ‘We will prevail. We will write. People will read. Literature is essential’The Norwegian bestselling author on being inspired by Dostoyevsky and Adrian Mole, and his very strong desire for fiction after five quite autobiographical novelsThu Oct 01 2015 - 14:50
Kati Hiekkapelto: ‘I have visited so many cultures, minds and emotions through reading’‘I don’t particularly like doing background research. I would love just to imagine everything. However, since I write about police work, I have to get the facts straight’Tue Sept 22 2015 - 16:04
Hilary Mantel’s Assassination of Margaret Thatcher shortlisted for BBC story awardMark Haddon, Jonathan Buckley, Frances Leviston and Jeremy Page are also in the running for £15,000 awardThu Sept 17 2015 - 15:37
Make Them Visible: Oxfam Ireland on Culture NightNew work by Belinda McKeon, Gerald Dawe and Jan Carson: a sneak preview of Oxfam Books’ photo exhibition and evening of readings highlighting the lives of displaced people and refugeesThu Sept 17 2015 - 14:30
Agatha Christie: genius or hack? Crime writers pass judgment and pick favouritesJohn Banville, Sinead Crowley, Liz Nugent, Sophie Hannah, Val McDermid, Christie scholar John Curran and more crime writers give their take on the Queen of CrimeWed Sept 16 2015 - 10:00
Asking For It by Louise O’Neill is the new Irish Times Book Club choiceA searing account of a rape and its aftermath in a close-knit Irish community, Asking For It looks set to enjoy the crossover success of O’Neill’s YA debut, Only Ever YoursMon Sept 14 2015 - 12:15
Irish writers respond to refugee crisis for Oxfam Ireland Culture Night projectNew work by Eoin McNamee, Nuala Ní Chonchúir and Rita Ann Higgins: a sneak preview of Make Them Visible, a photo exhibition and evening of readings highlighting the lives of displaced people and refugeesThu Sept 10 2015 - 14:40
New Seamus Heaney work to be published next yearVerse translation of Virgil’s Aeneid: Book VI was given impetus by death of poet’s fatherThu Sept 10 2015 - 12:45
Donal Ryan ‘blown away’ by winner of this year’s €3,000 Moth short story prizeTexan author Marc Phillips ‘walked away from writing to make the mistakes necessary for new stories’Tue Sept 08 2015 - 16:35
Geoff Mulligan on Joseph O’Connor: ‘Joe has never been afraid of challenges’Authors & Editors – Joseph O’Connor on Geoff Mulligan: ‘Geoff took a manuscript that was cripplingly long and unwieldy and helped me sculpt it into a literary novel that is also a page-turner’Tue Sept 01 2015 - 13:15
Move over, Morrissey: the musicians who moonlight as writers, and vice versaMorrissey is far from the first performer to turn to prose, or writer who can play. Paul Muldoon, Julian Gough, Ferdia MacAnna, Billy Roche and Brendan Graham explore the transition and we profile a host of othersMon Aug 31 2015 - 11:00
Ann O’Loughlin’s The Ballroom Cafe is surprise Irish hit on Amazon 2015 top 20Debut novel about forced illegal adoptions from Ireland to the US has over 150,000 ebook sales in just three months, making it this year’s bestselling Irish digital bookWed Aug 26 2015 - 16:50
The 100 best novels in English? Irish writers and critics have their sayJulian Gough, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and a host of others respond to Robert McCrum’s ‘100 greatest novels written in English’. Read on for lively debate and hot book tipsThu Aug 20 2015 - 12:00
The secret lives of the priests in Father TedWhat links the classic sitcom to The Smiths, Freddie Mercury, Star Wars, Trainspotting, Ballykissangel, Emmerdale and the cream of Irish journalism? Martin Doyle confesses allWed Jul 29 2015 - 11:00
Christine Dwyer Hickey Q&A: my influences, from Mrs Dalloway to Janice Galloway‘There is no better way to appreciate another culture or to begin to understand the lives of others than through a well-written novel’Fri Jul 24 2015 - 09:31
Colm Tóibín wins Hawthornden Prize for ‘Nora Webster’Irish writer awarded one of literature’s oldest and most prestigious awards for novelThu Jul 23 2015 - 01:00
Reviewing Irish books: the good, the bad and the ugly truthA scathing review of Paul Murray’s new novel was the talk of literary circles. But do too many Irish reviewers pull their punches? And what’s it like to get a bad review? We asked the expertsThu Jul 16 2015 - 14:25
The Lives of Women by Christine Dwyer Hickey is the new Irish Times Book Club pickA modern Valley of the Squinting Windows moved from small-town Ireland to suburbiaTue Jul 07 2015 - 09:30
Eoin McNamee: a capital crime writerA decade after writing The Blue Tango about a real-life murder, the author revisited another crime scene in Orchid Blue. Martin Doyle interviews a true great of true crimeFri Jun 26 2015 - 10:45
Roy Foster to curate WB Yeats evening at National Concert HallBeautiful Lofty Things on September 12th, directed by Alan Gilsenan, will feature John Banville, Eavan Boland, Lisa Dwan, John Montague, Iarla Ó Lionáird and Martin HayesThu Jun 25 2015 - 10:26
Jonathan Bardon Q&A: ‘good history is not enough: the historian also has a duty to tell it well’‘Read your first drafts out loud to yourself, as if you were giving a sermon – a great way to show up areas in need of improvement’Wed Jun 24 2015 - 10:45
