The Arts Council Podcast

The August Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Kevin Power about his novel ‘White City’

“Ben, the protagonist of White City, is, John Self writes in the Guardian, the ‘son of a disgraced Dublin banker, languishing in rehab and writing an account of his wrong turns as therapy.’ As Ben gets involved in a dodgy property deal in Serbia, Power creates a world of Irish people on the make with the hapless Ben at its centre. Ben, the Irish Times writes, ‘is Power’s unforgettable creation.” — Colm Tóibín

Kevin Power is the author of two novels, Bad Day in Blackrock (2008) and White City (2021). He is the winner of the 2009 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Irish Independent, and many other places. He teaches in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin.

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The July Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Nicole Flattery about her short story collection ‘Nothing Special’

“Nothing Special is set at a very particular New York moment. It is 1966. Mae, the protagonist, lands a job as typist for the artist Andy Warhol who is embarking on an unconventional novel by taping the conversations of his associates and friend. Mae moves on the edges of Warhol’s world, attending the counterculture parties. The novel dramatizes her coming of-age in Warhol’s New York.” — Colm Tóibín

Nicole Flattery’s story collection Show Them A Good Time was published by The Stinging Fly in Ireland and Bloomsbury in the UK in 2019. Her novel Nothing Special is forthcoming in 2023. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the London Review of Books and Sight & Sound Magazine.

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The April Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer John Banville about his novel ‘The Singularities’

“In this brilliant and dreamy novel, John Banville gives life to the many characters who have peopled his fiction over fifty years. He allows them to meet each other, revisit old scenes not as ghosts or as revenants but as fictional protagonists with their own precise memories, their own pressing desires. There are some resonant evocations of place but all is bathed in a sense of pure aftermath.” — Colm Tóibín

John Banville is a novelist, screenwriter, playwright and book reviewer. He worked in journalism for many years, and was literary editor at The Irish Times from 1988 to 2000. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, and other journals. His novels include The Book of Evidence, The Sea, and, most recently, The Singularities. Among the awards he has received are the Man Booker Prize, the Austrian State Prize for Literature, the Kafka Prize, Irish PEN Award and the Prince of Asturias Award. He has written a number of crime novels, including Snow, and, most recently, April in Spain. He was born in Wexford, and lives in Dublin.

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The June Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Luke Cassidy about his novel ‘Iron Annie.

“Iron Annie is written with astonishing energy and verve. It is set in the criminal underworld of Dundalk, but more important, it is written in a tone that is intriguing and unforgettable. It uses a living and contemporary language distilled by Cassidy into a radically original style, a style that establishes him, with this debut book, as one of the most exciting writers in Ireland now.” — Colm Tóibín

Luke Cassidy is a writer and theatremaker from Dundalk. His debut novel Iron Annie was published by Bloomsbury Books in September 2021, and shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize in 2022. He toured a theatre adaptation of Iron Annie to theatres around Ireland in 2021 & 2022, and is currently developing new work for the stage. His second novel, Tooth & Nail, will be published in early 2024, also by Bloomsbury Books. He is published in North America by Vintage/Anchor Books.

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The May Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Emma Donoghue about her novel ‘Haven’

“Haven, Emma Donoghue’s fourteenth novel, is set on Skellig Michael in the year 600 when three Irishmen decide to establish a monastery on this extraordinary piece of bare rock. The Chicago Review of Books has written: ‘In classic Donoghue narrative style, it all unfolds in a confined space under cramped conditions ... convincingly conveyed by Donoghue’s raw descriptions and her exceptional skill with emotionally authentic dialogue.” — Colm Tóibín

Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an award-winning writer living in Canada. Her latest novel Haven, is about the monks who landed on Skellig Michael in the seventh century. She was nominated for an Academy Award and a Bafta for her adaptation of her Booker-shortlisted international bestseller Room, and her theatrical adaptation with songs by Cora Bissett and Kathryn Joseph (which premiered at the Abbey) will open on Broadway this April. She co-wrote the 2022 film of her novel The Wonder, Netflix UK’s first feature shot in Ireland. Some of her other novels are The Pull of the Stars, Akin, Frog Music, The Sealed Letter, Life Mask and Slammerkin, as well as The Lotterys Plus One and The Lotterys More or Less for younger readers.

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The March Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Philip Ó Ceallaigh about his book 'Trouble'.

“Philip Ó Ceallaigh is a brilliant, uncompromising and ambitious writer who has long been resident in Bucharest. Of his collection of stories ‘Trouble’, the Los Angeles Review of Books wrote: ‘Ó Ceallaigh writes with such immediacy, such confessional intensity, that when the narrator leans in close and says, “Look — there lies trouble,” it is impossible to look away.” - Colm Tóibín

Philip Ó Ceallaigh has published over fifty short stories, most of them gathered in his three collections. The most recent is Trouble, from the Stinging Fly Press. He has been described by John Banville as “a master” of the short story form and named by Rob Doyle as his “favourite living writer of short stories”. His work has appeared in Granta, The Los Angeles Review of Books and The Irish Times and has been translated into over a dozen languages. He was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for his first book, Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse. He is also an essayist and critic with a particular interest in Jewish-European history, and his translation of Mihail Sebastian’s interwar novel For Two Thousand Years was published by Penguin Classics. He lives in Bucharest, Romania.

Learn more about the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme here: www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction-2022-2024/

The February Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Louise Kennedy about her book 'Trespasses'.

The unforgettable protagonist of Louise Kennedy’s ‘Trespasses’ is 24-year-old Cushla Lavery, a Catholic schoolteacher living in 1975 in a small town outside Belfast. The novel narrates the story of her love affair with an older, married, Protestant barrister with the same wit and eye for detail as are on display in her book of stories ‘The End of the World is a Cul de Sac.’ - Colm Tóibín

Louise Kennedy grew up in Holywood, Co. Down. Her short story collection, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac (Bloomsbury 2021) won the John McGahern Prize. Her debut novel, Trespasses (Bloomsbury 2022) won Eason’s Novel of the Year at An Post Irish Book Awards, and was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize. Before she started writing, she spent nearly thirty years working as a chef. She lives in Sligo.

Learn more about the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme here: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction-2022-2024/

The January Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Eimear McBride about her novel 'A Girl is a Half-formed Thing'.

“Eimear McBride’s groundbreaking first novel uses a style that matches the conscious mind’s darting processes. It tells the story of a young woman in an Irish town in a time when the open religiosity is in conflict with changing sexual mores. In the novel, words and sentences themselves are under pressure as the events of the novel become more tense and dramatic and painful.” — Colm Tóibín

Eimear McBride is the author of three novels: ‘Strange Hotel’, ‘The Lesser Bohemians’ and ‘A Girl is a Half-formed Thing’. She held the inaugural Creative Fellowship at the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading which resulted in the performance work ‘Mouthpieces’ - later broadcast by RTE Radio. Her first full length non-fiction work ‘Something Out of Place: Women & Disgust’ was published in 2021, while her first foray into film writing and direction ‘A Very Short Film About Longing,’ produced by DMC and BBC Film, has recently been completed. She is the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Goldsmiths Prize, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Desmond Eliot Prize and the Kerry Prize. She grew up in the west of Ireland and now lives in London.

Learn more about the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme here: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction-2022-2024/

The December Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Bernard MacLaverty about his short story collection 'Blank Pages and Other Stories'.

“MacLaverty offers a masterclass in how to create character, how to build scenes by accretion of detail, how to work with implication and suggestion, how to write indirectly and manages to create more energy and more expression by working in muted colours and plain textures.” – Colm Tóibín

Bernard MacLaverty was born in Belfast (14.9.42) and lived there until 1975 when he moved to Scotland with his wife, Madeline, and four children. He has been a Medical Laboratory Technician, a mature student, a teacher of English and occasionally a Writer-in-Residence (Universities of Aberdeen, Augsburg, Liverpool John Moore’s and Iowa State). After living for a time in Edinburgh and the Isle of Islay he now lives in Glasgow. He is a member of Aosdána. He has published five novels and six collections of short stories most of which are gathered into Collected Stories (2013). He has written versions of his fiction for other media – radio plays, television plays, screenplays, libretti. Blank Pages, published in August 2021, is his sixth collection of short stories.

Learn more about the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme here: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction-2022-2024/

Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín delivered his first annual lecture on 6th November 2022 in Town Hall Theatre Galway. For those unable to join us at the event, we are delighted to be able to share a recording of this extraordinary evening.