A reading of 'The Little Red Balloon', the winning entry in the 15-18 category of the Children's Short Story competition, by 17-year-old Emma Broderick, of Muckross Park College, Dublin.

Darran Anderson, author of Inventory

Feb 8th, 2020 33m 48s

Books Editor Martin Doyle talks to Darran Anderson about his memoir of growing up in Troubles-torn Derry, Inventory: A River, A City, A Family.They discuss the book's themes of family, history and memory, its inspiration found in the ideas of

The best crime fiction of 2019

Nov 16th, 2019 40m 49s

Welcome to The Irish Times Books Podcast. In this latest episode, Martin Doyle talk to The Irish Times’s two regular crime fiction reviewers, Declan Burke and Declan Hughes, both acclaimed crime writers themselves, about their favourite crime f

Remembering Maeve Binchy - with Henrietta McKervey and Gordon Snell

Oct 2nd, 2019 35m 1s

On the eve of this weekend’s Echoes festival in Dalkey, celebrating Maeve Binchy and Irish writing, its programmer, author Henrietta McKervey, and Maeve’s widower, Gordon Snell, join me to talk about the thinking behind the festival and the man

Danielle McLaughlin - A Partial List of the Saved

Sep 14th, 2019 33m 47s

It has been some year for Danielle McLaughlin. On Thursday, she won the 2019 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, whose £30,000 (€33,500) prize money makes it the world’s richest for a short story. Last March, she was awarded the $165,000 (€

Anthony Farrell, founder of The Lilliput Press

Aug 16th, 2019 42m 59s

Antony Farrell, of Lilliput Press, which this year celebrates its 35th anniversary, discusses his career in publishing, the history of the press and the “genius” authors with whom he has worked over the years, including Hubert Butler – “he was

Mick Herron, author of the Slough House series

Jul 6th, 2019 24m 37s

Welcome to the latest Irish Times Books Podcast, an interview with Mick Herron, the author of the Slough House series of spy novels.Herron is originally from a working-class background in Newcastle but went on to study English at Oxford, wher

Joseph O'Connor - Shadowplay

Jun 8th, 2019 1h 3m

Author Joseph O'Connor talks to Martin Doyle about his new novel Shadowplay, a complicated love affair featuring Dracula creator Bram Stoker, the first Irish writer he fell for.They also talk about his career from Cowboys & Indians to Star of

Laureate na nÓg Sarah Crossan

May 25th, 2019 29m 53s

Welcome to The Irish Times Books Podcast, which this week features my interview with Sarah Crossan, Ireland’s Laureate na nÓg.Crossan is one of Ireland’s most successful Young Adult writers, having won the Carnegie Medal in 2016 for her verse

Writing for Children - with Shane Hegarty, Author of Boot & The Darkmouth Series

May 11th, 2019 28m 37s

Laura Slattery interviews children's author Shane Hegarty about what it means to write for children, with their surprisingly strong taste for peril and horror, and how his own kids's brutal honesty helps him to create his books. Shane's books

Sinéad Gleeson and Sarah Davis-Goff

Apr 13th, 2019 45m 11s

April’s Irish Times Books Podcast features interviews with Sinéad Gleeson about her acclaimed collection of personal essays, Constellations, and Sarah Davis-Goff, co-founder of Tramp Press, about her own first novel, Last Ones Left Alive, a dys

Kevin Breathnach - Tunnel Vision

Mar 16th, 2019 30m 48s

Martin Doyle talks to young author Kevin Breathnach about his acclaimed debut collection of essays, Tunnel Vision, which mixes art history with remarkably candid accounts of his own life. Plus: In the five decades since their inception, the H

Lisa Harding - Harvesting

Nov 30th, 2018 36m 18s

Laura Slattery talks to Lisa Harding, author of Harvesting.

Helen Cullen - The Lost Letters of William Woolf

Nov 5th, 2018 40m 13s

Books Editor Martin Doyle talks to Helen Cullen about her novel The Lost Letters of William Woolf.Recorded at the Waterford Writers Festival.

Paul Lynch

Jul 2nd, 2018 45m 37s

Grace, the third novel by Irish author Paul Lynch, was the winner of this year’s Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. In this month’s Irish Times Book Club podcast, recorded at the Irish Writers Centre in Parnell Square in Dublin, Lynch tells u

Kit de Waal - The Trick to Time

May 31st, 2018 58m 59s

The Trick to Time by Kit de Waal is May’s Irish Times Book Club choice. Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction even before it was published in late March, it is a tragic Birmingham Irish love story set against the backdrop of the IRA bomb

Sinéad Gleeson - The Long Gaze Back

Apr 27th, 2018 50m 11s

This month's guest is Sinéad Gleeson, one of Ireland's leading arts journalists. She is a former presenter of the book show on RTE radio and the editor of three anthologies of Irish short stories. Next year Picador will publish a collection

June Caldwell - Room Little Darker

Apr 4th, 2018 42m 46s

This episode features a conversation between Irish Times Books Editor Martin Doyle and June Caldwell, author of Room Little Darker, at the Mountains to Sea festival in Dun Laoghaire last month. As ever, the podcast recording was preceded by a

Sally Rooney - Conversations With Friends

Nov 30th, 2017 46m 53s

Conversations With Friends, Sally Rooney’s critically acclaimed first novel, has picked up deserved word-of-mouth momentum since it was published earlier this year. In this month’s Irish Times Book Club podcast, recorded live at the Irish Write

Adrian McKinty - Rain Dogs

Nov 1st, 2017 35m 29s

Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty is October’s Irish Times Book Club pick. The Edgar Award-winning thriller is the fifth in the Carrickfergus-born author’s Sean Duffy series about a Catholic RUC man set in Troubles-era Northern Ireland.McKinty spok

Neil Hegarty - Inch Levels

Sep 29th, 2017 37m 18s

Why do so many readers tell writer Neil Hegarty that he captured their own family dynamic in his debut novel Inch Levels?Perhaps the burial of past traumas was so common an enterprise in Ireland among a certain generation, it meant many of t

Shane Connaughton - Married Quarters

Aug 31st, 2017 1h 6m

This month's novel is Married Quarters by Shane Connaughton. Books Editor Martin Doyle interviewed him at the West Cork Literary Festival.

Jennifer Johnston

Jun 30th, 2017 44m 24s

Welcome to the Irish Times Book Club podcast for June 2017.If this is your first time listening, you might be wondering how this works.Each month we run a series of articles on irishtimes.com on a chosen author. And at the end of each mon

Booker Special - David Grossman and Jessica Cohen

Jun 16th, 2017 23m 7s

This week the Man Booker International Prize, awarded for fiction translated in English, was won by David Grossman and his translator Jessica Cohen for his novel A Horse Walks Into a Bar. They both spoke to Irish Times Literary Correspondent E

EM Reapy - Red Dirt

May 31st, 2017 27m 8s

Laura Slattery interviews EM Reapy about her novel Red Dirt at The Irish Writer's Centre.www.irishwriterscentre.iewww.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-book-club