Picture Credit: Douglas Banville
HEADLINE AUTHOR
John Banville
Booker Prize Winner John Banville in conversation with Kevin Curran at The Millbank Theatre.
John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945 and now lives in Dublin. He is the author of many novels, including The Book of Evidence; The Sea, which won the 2005 Man Booker Prize; and the bestselling Quirke series, which has twice been shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger. His most recent novel Venetian Vespers was published in 2025.
Widely considered one of Ireland’s greatest novelists, his awards include the Lannan Literary Award, the Man Booker Prize (2005), the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011 and the 2013 Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature.
A one-time literary editor of The Irish Times, he navigated a thirty-year career in journalism alongside his career as a novelist, beginning in 1970 with his short story collection Long Lankin and continuing up to last year’s Venetian Vespers. In the intervening years he has amassed an imposing body of work, from his acclaimed Frames trilogy (The Book of Evidence (1989), Ghosts (1993) and Athena (1995)) to his atmospheric crime fiction novels, written under his Benjamin Black pen name, and the aforementioned Man Booker Prize-winning The Sea.
American novelist Don DeLillo described Banville's prose as "dangerous and clear-running", David Mehegan of The Boston Globe called him "one of the great stylists writing in English today", while The Irish Times claimed that he is “perhaps the only living writer capable of advancing fiction beyond the point reached by Beckett.”
He is currently working on a memoir, which follows on from 2016’s Time Pieces.
Andrea Mara
Andrea Mara is a number one Sunday Times, Irish Times and Kindle bestselling author, whose books have sold more than one million copies across all formats.
The TV adaptation of her 2021 book, All Her Fault, aired in November 2025 to huge critical and audience acclaim, with Sarah Snook (Succession) playing the lead.
Her most recent novel, It Should Have Been You, won Irish Crime Novel of the Year at the 2025 An Post Book Awards. It was a number 1 bestseller in Ireland for six weeks, and a Top Ten bestseller in the UK hardback and paperback charts. Her book No One Saw a Thing was a Sunday Times number one bestseller and has sold over half a million copies.
Andrea lives in Dublin with her husband and three children. You can find Andrea on Instagram @andreamaraauthor
Catherine Ryan Howard is an award-winning, no. 1 bestselling thriller writer from Cork, Ireland.
Her novels have been included in the New York Times Best Thrillers of the Year, the Washington Post’s Best Mysteries and Thrillers of the Year and the Sunday Times Best Thrillers of the Year. She is published in 21 languages and a number of titles are being developed for screen.
An adaptation of her lockdown thriller, 56 DAYS, starring Dove Cameron and Avan Jogia, became Prime Video's no. 1 show worldwide just days after its release.
Her latest novel is Burn After Reading and her next novel, coming July 2026, is Buyer Beware.
Catherine
Ryan Howard
Anna Carey
Anna Carey is an Irish Book Award-winning novelist, journalist, editor and scriptwriter.
She is the author of seven acclaimed novels for young adults. Her debut novel The Real Rebecca won the Senior Children’s Book of the Year prize at the 2011 Irish Book Awards. Her drama podcast The Famine Monologues was released by RTÉ in 2021 and her play The Making of Mollie was staged in 2024.
Our Song, her first book for adults, was published in June 2025 and was shortlisted for Popular Fiction Book of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards. Her second novel for adults, Love Scene, will be published by Hachette Ireland in May 2026.
Photo Credit: Bríd O'Donovan
Eamon Carr
Eamon Carr is a man who wears many hats: writer, musician, art historian. The Kells native’s artistic career began when, inspired by the Liverpool Scene, he set up the Tara Telephone poetry and performance collective with Peter Fallon in 1969.
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In 1971, he co-founded the seminal Celtic rock band Horslips, in which he is lyricist and drummer; he has also published numerous poetry collections, verse plays DUSK and Deirdre Unforgiven, A Journal of Sorrow, and went on to enjoy a lengthy and hugely successful career in both sportswriting and entertainment journalism.
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Many of his encounters with legendary names from his journalistic career were recounted in Pure Gold: Memorable Conversations with Remarkable People, a collection of interviews from across the decades which was published by Merrion Press in 2025. Told in Carr’s immediate, entertaining style, Pure Gold is a portal to a time before practised TV chat show performances and the churn of social media sound bites, providing honest and sometimes introspective insights into the private lives of global stars and national treasures, such as Jack Charlton, Eartha Kitt, Shane MacGowan and Malcolm McLaren.
Photo Credit: Kieron Ellis
Pat Carty
Pat Carty is a freelance arts journalist whose work appears in the Sunday Independent, The Irish Independent, The Irish Times, The Sunday Times, The Irish Examiner, The Business Post, Hot Press, and Classic Rock Magazine. He also contributes to several radio programmes on RTÉ and Newstalk.
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Sinéad Cuddihy
Sinéad Cuddihy is the founder of Tired Mammy Book Club, an Instagram-based book
club and online community of 14K+ readers. She hosts monthly Zoom book club
meetings, organises in-person meet-ups throughout the year, and regularly attends
book launches and literary events nationwide.
Sinéad has interviewed a wide range of authors at both online and live events and has appeared as a guest speaker at many festivals, events and on podcasts. In 2025, she was an ambassador for the National Public Libraries Open Day campaign and is a regular guest contributor to The Claire Byrne Show.
Kevin Curran
Kevin Curran's third novel, Youth, was published to critical acclaim by The Lilliput Press in 2023. It was an Irish Times, Sunday Independent & RTE Culture Best Book of 2023. The paperback edition of Youth was published February 2025. He is a secondary school teacher in his hometown of Balbriggan.
Sinéad Gleeson’s essay collection Constellations: Reflections from Life won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. It shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize,the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Michel Déon Prize and hasbeen translated into several languages.
She is the editor of four anthologies including The Art of the Glimpse and the award-winning The Long Gaze Back:An Anthology of Irish Women Writers, and The Glass Shore: Short Stories. She is co-editor with Kim Gordon of This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music.
Her debut novel, Hagstone, was published in 2024 by 4th Estate. It was longlisted for 2025 Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the 2025 JohnMcGahern Book Prize.
Sinéad Gleeson
Photo Credit: Bríd O'Donovan
Sinéad Gleeson
​Belinda McKeon is a novelist, short story writer and playwright. She is the author of the novels Solace (2011) and Tender (2015), and has had short fiction and non-fiction published in The Paris Review, Granta, Winter Papers, A Public Space, The Stinging Fly and elsewhere. Her plays have been produced in Dublin and New York, most recently at the 2017 Dublin Theatre Festival, with Nora (Corn Exchange). After almost two decades in the US, where she taught at Rutgers University, she is now an Associate Professor in the English Department at Maynooth University, where she directs the MA in Creative Writing.
Photo Credit: Rich Gilligan
​Belinda McKeon
Belinda McKeon is a novelist, short story writer and playwright. She is the author of the novels Solace (2011) and Tender (2015), and has had short fiction and non-fiction published in The Paris Review, Granta, Winter Papers, A Public Space, The Stinging Fly and elsewhere. Her plays have been produced in Dublin and New York, most recently at the 2017 Dublin Theatre Festival, with Nora (Corn Exchange). After almost two decades in the US, where she taught at Rutgers University, she is now an Associate Professor in the English Department at Maynooth University, where she directs the MA in Creative Writing
Photo Credit: Rich Gilligan
Photo Credit: Rich Gilligan
Alan Nolan
Alan Nolan is the author and illustrator of Fintan’s Fifteen, Conor’s Caveman and the Sam Hannigan series, and he is the illustrator of the popular Gordon’s Game books written by Gordon D’Arcy and Paul Howard, as well as Animal Crackers by Sarah Webb. He is the recipient of the Children’s Books Ireland 2024 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Books. His book Molly Malone & Bram Stoker in the Riddle of the Disappearing Dickens was shortlisted for An Post Children’s Book of the Year 2024 (Senior), and his latest book, The Grand Central Cinema Club, is out right now!
Niamh Sharkey
Niamh Sharkey is an award-winning author and illustrator with over 25 years’ experience in
literature, animation and the visual arts. Her picture books are published in over twenty-eight
languages. Her books have won numerous awards including the prestigious Mother Goose
Award and The Irish Book of the Year Awards. Titles include the The Ravenous Beast,
Santasaurus, On the Road with Mavis and Marge (Walker Books) and new titles co-created
with her husband Owen Churcher, A Field Guide to Leafling, Hello Bird and Penguin
TV (Gill Books). Niamh was honoured to be chosen as Ireland's second Laureate na nÓg (2012-14).
She is the co-creator of Disney Junior pre-school show Eureka!, as well as the creator and executive producer of Disney Junior's Emmy nominated animated series Henry Hugglemonster. based on her original picture book, I’m a Happy Hugglewug. www.niamhsharkey.com