Send us Fan Mail

On today's show we talk to Liam Carson, director of the Irish language literary festival IMRAM about this year's wide-ranging and adventurous hybrid programme, which starts today. And we talk to Alannah Hopkin about her honest and heartbreaking literary memoir of the lives of two Irish writers,  A Very Strange Man : A Memoir of Aidan Higgins, published by New Island Books. Alannah's Toaster Challenge choice is Songs for the Flames, stories by International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner Juan Gabriel Vasquez.

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Today's show is a short story special and double Toaster Challenge edition. We begin with John MacKenna whose We Seldom Talk About the Past, the first selection of short stories from one of Ireland's great masters of the form, has just been published by New Island. John's Toaster Challenge choice is Raymond Carver's All of Us: The Collected Poems.
Next up is Madeleine D'Arcy, who talks about her follow up to her award-winning first collection Waiting for the Bullet with Liberty Terrace, published by Doire Press. Madeleine's Toaster Challenge choice is Alastair McLeod's No Great Mischief.  A very full programme today; enjoy!

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Why have women been treated differently, and discriminated against, in the literary world? Why has gender been a ‘problem’ in the writing, publishing, funding and reviewing scene? And why does it matter? Éilis Ni Dhuibhne asked twenty one writers who were born in mid-twentieth-century Ireland, north and south, to write about their literary lives. The resulting essays, full of fascinating insights into the journeys of these writers, are published as  Look! It’s a Woman Writer!: Irish Literary Feminisms, 1970-2020 edited by Eilis Ni Dhuibhne. Enda interviews Éilis and writer Catherine Dunne, who also contributes to the book. 

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

To celebrate thirty years of the Irish  Writers Centre, Enda talks to co-host Peter, who was the first director of the Centre, about the early years, and Peter talks to current director Valerie Bistany about current activities and plans for the future. And the toaster is back in action, with Valerie choosing Kent Haruf’s Plainsong for her Toaster Challenge.

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

We ease our way back into breakfast book chat after our summer intermission with an episode on what we read ourselves during the summer. Enda chooses Lucia Berlin's A Manual for Cleaning Women, while Peter selects Deer on the High Hills: Selected Poems by Iain Crichton Smith, edited by John Greening.
We also give a shout out to this weekend's Fingal Poetry Festival and to forthcoming and recently published books such as Hugo Hamilton's The Pagesand Colm Tóibín's The Magician.

No Toaster Challenge this morning as we're getting the toaster fixed, but it will be back in operation next week. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Today, in the last podcast in the current season, Enda Wyley talks to Aoife Lyall about her debut collection Mother Nature, published by Bloodaxe Books. Aoife's Toaster Challenge Choice is A Line Made by Walking by Sara Baume, published by Tramp Press in 2017.
And Books for Breakfast co-host Peter Sirr talks about his Intimate City: Dublin Essays, just published by Gallery Press.

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Today former RTE producer and writer Julian Vignoles, know for his biographies of Rory Gallagher and David Thomson of Woodbrook fame, reviews Sinéad O'Connor's memoir Rememberings, described as 'inspiring, liberating, hilarious and fascinating'  by theIrish Times and  'beautifully observed ... lyrical, funny and anguished' by the Guardian.

Our Toaster Challenge guest is Victoria Kennefick whose debut collection Eat Or We Both Starve, was published recently by Carcanet.  Her collection draws readers into seemingly recognisable set-pieces - the family home, the shared meal, the rituals of historical occasions, desire - but gives them new shapes and uses them to explore what it is to live with the past  and not to be consumed by it.

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

This morning's show features  interviews with two outstanding writers. First up is Louise Kennedy whose collection of stories The End of the World is a Cul de Sac has been widely praised. 'A dazzling, heartbreaking debut collection' said the Guardian while the Sunday Times said that 'Kennedy's voice, and her unforgiving gaze, are electric'.
Our Toaster Challenge guest is the fine poet Penelope Shuttle whose new collection, Lyonesse, is published this month by Bloodaxe. The submerged land of Lyonesse was once part of Cornwall, according to myth and the oral tradition, standing for a lost paradise in Arthurian legend, but for this poet, who has lived all her adult life in Cornwall, it's now an emblem of human frailty.
Her Toaster Challenge choice is Denise Levertov's still available Collected Earlier Poems 1940-1960.

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.
Other music:
'Undertow' and 'Wanderlust' by Scott Buckley | https://soundcloud.com/scottbuckley
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Alone, Purple Planet Music, https://www.purple-planet.com/

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above.

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Today we talk to Evelyn Conlon whose new collection of stories, Moving About the Place, has recently been published by Blackstaff Press. Brilliantly written, witty, and full of the sharp observation for which Conlon is well known, Moving About the Place brings together some of the best of her recent work, along with brand-new stories, including a novella, to show how borders, movement and history change and transform people’s lives.
Evelyn’s Toaster Challenge Choice is the classic Enormous Changes At the Last Minute by Grace Paley.
First up on the show  is James Harpur’s The Examined Life, a sequence of honest and compelling poems about his five years in a boy’s boarding school in the 1970s. We discuss his memorable account and listen to the poems he recorded specially for us.


Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.
Other music:
Soft Interlude by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Feather by Ikson | https://youtube.com/ikson
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Link music: Green Fields ©Scott Holmes Music https://www.scottholmesmusic.com

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Where did Dublin's uber-toffs live in the eighteenth century? Melanie Hayes drops in to talk about The Best Address in Town, Henrietta Street, Dublin and Its First Residents, 1720-1780, published by Four Courts Press. Our Toaster Challenge guest is Moya Cannon, whose Collected Poems was recently published by Carcanet, featuring more than three decades of fine work. Moya's Toaster Challenge choice is the classic The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. Bring them with you on your morning walk!

Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it.
Link music: Green Fields ©Scott Holmes Music https://www.scottholmesmusic.com

Artwork by Freya Sirr

To subscribe to Books for Breakfast go to your podcast provider of choice (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google etc) and search for the podcast then hit subscribe or follow, or simply click the appropriate button above. 

Support the show