‘I am deeply interested in Ireland’s complex past’

‘I have a ritual of making tea, lighting a candle and then I am gone into my fictional world’

Never let research get in the way of a good story

Authors Joseph O’Connor, Jo Baker, Niamh Boyce and Justin Cartwright on the importance and pitfalls of research

A good place to start: how to find the idea that can drive a novel

Irish authors tell us how and where they find inspiration for an idea strong enough to sustain a book, and how they go about turning that into an extended narrative

Tale with potential loses in its telling

Oona Frawley’s debut novel, Flight, about a Zimbabwean woman who has just arrived in Ireland, and the elderly couple she cares for, is the first book from Tramp Press

The herbalist who captured a market-town mob

Niamh Boyce’s fictional debut – about a 1930s potion seller whose real business is a dark secret – captures small-town Ireland of both then and now

Word for word: a year of Irish debuts