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'A single one of Keegan's grounded, powerful sentences can contain volumes of social history. Every word is the right word in the right place, and the effect is resonant and deeply moving.'
– Hilary Mantel

'A haunting, hopeful  masterpiece'.
– Sinéad Gleeson

'Astonishing ... Claire Keegan makes her moments real – and then makes them matter.'
– Colm Tóibín

'A moral tale that is unsentimental and deeply affecting, because true and right.'
– Andrew O'Hagan

Some of the responses to Claire Keegan's new book. Today on Books for Breakfast, in an extended and wide-ranging interview,  Claire talks to us about and reads from  Small Things Like These.

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

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On today's show we talk to two poets who have published new collections: Eleanor Hooker, whose Of Ochre and Ash is published by Dedalus Press, and Amanda Bell whose Riptide is available from Doire Press. Eleanor's Toaster Challenge choice is 'Snow Woman',  a poem by Breda Wall Ryan while Amanda chooses 'I Worried',  a poem by Mary Oliver.
And we mark the passing of two fine Irish poets, Máire Mhac an tSaoi and Brendan Kennelly.

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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. 

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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

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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

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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
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Artwork by Freya Sirr

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