By Liam Harrison The Dublin Review is a quarterly magazine of essays, memoir, reportage and fiction. Founded and edited by Brendan Barrington in 2000, The Dublin Review has a wonderful twenty-three year history, celebrated by the recent anthology of essays Show Your Work (2022), with earlier pieces collected in The Dublin Review Reader (2007). While the journal has published many great short stories over the years, its most remarkable intervention is the way it has championed the essay form, coinciding with and precipitating a new wave of Irish non-fiction. Brendan Barrington is also an ..read more

By Alice Seville In March 2021, still in the depths of pandemic chaos in the UK, Alice Seville met with the lovely Stephen Sexton over Zoom, to talk about his Forward Prize-winning poetry collection (Best First Collection, 2019) If All The World and Love Were Young, in anticipation of his more recent collection Cheryl’s Destinies (2021). The following is an account of their conversation. Stephen and Alice first met when they both lived in and frequented south and central Belfast and they reunited over Zoom to talk about the ekphrastic form, baby eels and YouTube Super Mario hacks (among other ..read more

By Natalie Wall Niamh Mulvey’s debut short story collection, Hearts and Bones, captures contemporary concerns about the challenges of communication and connection in an increasingly reified society, and explores these through everyday life and familiar characters. Set mainly between Ireland and London, these are stories about family, love, friendship and shame told through quiet but sometimes brutal details. Mulvey, originally from Kilkenny, is based in London, and Hearts and Bones explores the particular relationship between Ireland and London. Hearts and Bones is Mulvey’s first book, having ..read more

by Annalisa Mastronardi This month marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Annalisa Mastronardi speaks to contemporary Irish women writers about the legacy of the novel: how it has impacted on their work and changed their perception of literature’s possibilities.  A shortened version of this piece was first published by The Irish Independent.  “Will you, for Chrissake, stop asking fellas if they’ve read James Joyce’s Dubliners? They’re not interested. They’re out for the night. Eat and drink all you can and leave James Joyce to blow his own ..read more

For the next session of our Contemporary Irish Literature Book Club, we will read and discuss Claire Keegan’s new book Small Things Like These, via Zoom on Wednesday the 16th of February at 7pm. If you would like to attend the book club, please sign up to on Eventbrite page here, and we’ll send you a link ahead of the session:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/contemporary-irish-literature-book-club-claire-keegan-tickets-254665891537 The book club is organised by Dearbhaile Houston, Liam Harrison and Orlaith Darling, the founding members of the Contemporary Irish Literature research network ..read more

This October we are starting up our Contemporary Irish Literature Book Club! We’ll have a chat about a recent Irish book over Zoom, and suggest a few points for discussion. The first book we will discuss is Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney on Thursday the 14th of October at 7pm. If you would like to attend the book club, please sign up to our Eventbrite page here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/contemporary-irish-literature-book-club-sally-rooney-tickets-185974112577 The book club is organised by Dearbhaile Houston, Liam Harrison and Orlaith Darling, the founding members of the C ..read more

By Orlaith Darling Orlaith Darling (OD): Maybe we could start by introducing Paper Lanterns – what sort of writing you publish, how many issues you’ve had so far, who the team is, and so on. Margaret Masterson (MM): Paper Lanterns is a teen and young adult (YA) literary journal, started in early 2020. It was founded by two of my colleagues from the MPhil in Children’s Literature in Trinity, Grace Kelley and Amy O’Sullivan, and by a third colleague, Ruth Ennis, but she has since left the project to pursue her own writing. At that stage, I came on-board in January 2021. During our MPhil, we spok ..read more

By Annalisa Mastronardi Nuala O’Connor (also known as Nuala Ní Chonchúir) is a writer of fiction and poetry from Dublin, currently based in Galway. Publications include The Juno Charm (2011), a poetry collection with Salmon Press, Joyride to Jupiter (2017), a short story collection with New Island, as well as several novels including Becoming Belle (2018) and Miss Emily (2015). Her work has been nominated for numerous prizes such as the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year and the International Dublin Literary Award ..read more

By Liam Harrison Danny Denton is a writer from Cork. He is the editor of The Stinging Fly and author of The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow (2018). His next novel, All Along the Echo, will be published in 2022 by Atlantic Books. This interview was conducted over Zoom in May 2021, and subsequently edited for concision and clarity. Liam Harrison (LH): Could you tell us about The Stinging Fly, when was it set up, and what kind of writing it publishes? Danny Denton (DD): The Stinging Fly is an Irish literary magazine where we publish fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. It has been in existence si ..read more

By Alicia Byrne Keane Alicia Byrne Keane (ABK): First of all, it’s great to have the opportunity to interview you! I have really enjoyed your recent poetry in Banshee and Anthropocene. I wondered could you talk a bit about your own poetry first, maybe in terms of your process of writing about imagery from nature? I know every poem is different, but do you find yourself typically developing a poem out of – for instance – mainly sounds, images, or textures at the beginning? Susanna Galbraith (SG): Hi, that’s kind of you to say, thank you. These questions are always so difficult to answer, but I ..read more