Alvy Carragher reads from her new collection, What Remains the Same (The Gallery Press) What Remains the Same|Alvy Carragher|The Gallery Press The post Poetry Happening—Alvy Carragher appeared first on Books Ireland ..read more

Bernadette Gallagher reads from her new collection, The Risen Tree (Revival Press) The Risen Tree|Bernadette Gallagher|Revival Press The post Poetry Happening—Bernadette Gallagher appeared first on Books Ireland ..read more

The 2024 All Ireland Scholarships Creative Writing Award winners have been announced The winners in the Alumni and Public categories of the All Ireland Scholarships Creative Writing Awards have been announced. The winner of the 2024 AIS (Alumni) award is Rites of Passage by Surnaí Molloy. In second place is On the Platform, by Chess Law, and in third place is Mouse, again by Surnaí Molloy. Shortlisted writers were Lorraine McEvoy and Eoin Corcoran. Surnaí MolloyChess Law The judges also picked Mouse by Surnaí Molloy in third place. This is a very special achievement and speaks to her writing ..read more

Dinosaur Pie|Jen Wallace|Alan O’Rourke|Little Island ‘Illustration is a dopamine-generating endeavour’—Alan O’Rourke talks about his winding road to becoming an illustrator What brought you to illustration?  I took a very circuitous route, as many illustrators do. After a year studying Fine Art in ATU (GIT back then), I was advised my work was more illustrative. I didn’t fully understand what that meant at the time. Soon after, I left Galway and took up various jobseeker schemes back home.  While working with a non-profit, I discovered an old computer in the office and started making ..read more

Publishing Ireland welcomes Peter McKay as new president Peter McKay has been announced as the new president of Publishing Ireland, bringing decades of experience in the book industry to the role. Along with several leadership positions, he was Managing Director of Thomas Nelson, one of the largest educational publishers in the UK, which was then part of the Thomson Organisation (later Thomson Reuters). After the sale of Nelson to Kluwer, he joined Derwent Information before establishing his own strategic consultancy in 2004. Peter was instrumental in the Publishers Association, representing t ..read more

The National Library hosts an inaugural series of events featuring Ireland’s Booker Prize winners The National Library is to host an exciting new series featuring Ireland’s Booker Prize winners in conversation with their literary contemporaries, starting at the end of April. Paul Lynch starts the series off, reading from Prophet Song, followed by an in depth discussion with Belinda McKeon including questions from the audience. May and June will see John Banville and Claire Kilroy, Anne Enright and Nuala O’Connor, Roddy Doyle and Rob Doyle take part in these inaugural events which are curated b ..read more

Publishing Ireland hosts a two-day social media course for publishers Love it or loathe it, social media is an integral part of the book industry, and if you’re a publisher who wants to sharpen your skills in this area Publishing Ireland are running a two-day virtual course in May to help you and your team do just that. Rob Chilver from Adventures with Words will deliver a course highlighting the latest techniques and strategies to strengthen your social media advertising and publicity campaigns. With over 15 years in the book industry, Rob has worked in online merchandising and social media m ..read more

Forgottenness|Tanja Maljartschuk|Bullaun Press “How can one live with the overwhelming debts of history, and how are they paid off? To what extent are the living beholden to the dead?”— Forgottenness by Tanja Maljartschuk by Eoghan Smith Tanja Maljartschuk is a multi-award-winning writer from Ukraine, now resident in Vienna. Her latest novel, Forgottenness, won the BBC Book of the Year (Ukraine) in 2016, and has attracted a good deal of critical attention since its publication in English in a fine translation by Zenia Tompkins. This attention is rightly justified: Forgottenness  ..read more

Six poets are through to the final of this year’s Farmgate Café National Poetry Award, run in partnership with The Munster Literature Centre. Jane Clarke, Kevin Graham, Paula Meehan, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Peter Sirr, and Breda Spaight have been shortlisted for the €2000 prize. First awarded in 2019, the award is for the best full-length poetry collection in English (including translations from other languages) published in 2023 by a poet living in Ireland. In a year where a debut collection does not win the overall award, the highest scoring debut collection in the competition will be award ..read more

Browse all upcoming Irish published, Irish authored, and Irish interest books this month in First Flush—or dig into our archives all the way back to 2021 It might be the cruellest month for some, but April is full of wonderful new books, and this spring we have some beauties, including the latest historical fiction from one of the best in the field, Nuala O’Connor. Seaborne (New Island) is an intimate and thrilling portrayal of the life of Anne Bonny, an 18th-century Irish pirate, a sensuous portrait of a young woman out of step with her time and place. “I love how Nuala has given a full ficti ..read more