Books for Breakfast (Ireland)

Send us Fan Mail Epistolary novels used to be all the rage Think Clarissa, think Dracula, think the more recent We need to talk about Kevin. Last year saw another smash hit epistolary novel, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, published to wide acclaim and stellar sales, and shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Fiction prize . Three times a week, 73-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp sits down at her desk in her Maryland home to write her letters. Her correspondence has been, as she puts it, "the mainst...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we invite Colm Tóibín to the breakfast table to discuss his new book A Ship in Full Sail: The Laureate Lectures and Other Writings. The book collects the blogs he wrote during his term as Laureate for Irish Fiction, one written each month on topics as diverse as Artificial Intelligence, reading Ulysses, the discomfort of Salman Rushdie in the wilds of County Dublin, Bob Dylan in concert, a life of Thom Gunn and the author’s role in a campaign to sa...

Send us Fan Mail This episode sees us visiting Dublin's historic United Arts Club where Enda interviews Mary O'Donnell about her latest collection of short stories, Walking Ghosts. Praise for Walking Ghosts 'Each story shines in its own distinctive light.' —Neil Hegarty 'O'Donnell is unflinching in her ability to display humanity in all its flaws and vulnerabilities.' —Mary Costello 'The magic of her writing is in the subtle, mysterious evocation of the unconscious, of the potent mixtur...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode we talk about this year's International Literature Festival Dublin which runs from 16-25 May, and where Enda will be interviewing novelists Gethan Dick and Patrick Holloway. We also talk to Karin-Lin Greenberg about Your Are Here, her novel set in a dying mall in upstate New York. "Lin-Greenberg’s web of characters illustrate the complex lives of ordinary people." —Laura Zornosa, Time "Like Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, the charm of Lin-Greenberg’...

Send us Fan Mail On this episode we talk to poet novelist and critic Mary O’Donnell about Mary O’Malley’s The Shark Nursery, Patrick Holloway’s The Language of Remembering, ! All’ ARME /? by Eilish Martin and Beginnings Over and Over: Four New Poets from Ireland, edited by Leeanne Quinn. We also give a shout out to a special anthology for One Dublin One Book, Dublin, Written in our Hearts, published by the Stinging Fly Press and edited by Declan Meade. It’s an anthology that offer...

Send us Fan Mail ‘A beautiful tapestry of late middle age reckoning’ – today we interview the writer Mary Morrissy about her new collection of short stories, Twenty-Twenty Vision, published by Lilliput Press. For her Toaster Challenge, Mary chooses The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazard. Get the coffee on! This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with ...

Send us Fan Mail How much do we need to know about a writer's life? How does the life impinge on the work? What is the human price of art? In this episode we talk to biographer Adrian Frazier about John Montague: A Poet's Life. ‘The best Irish poet of his generation’ – Derek Mahon Already a highly lauded biographer, Adrian Frazier was a close acquaintance of Montague for more than forty years. In this fully authorised narrative he reveals the sources of poetry in Montague's life and traces th...

Send us Fan Mail On today’s show, the last of 2024, we talk to Keith Payne about his recent boat building and poem writing project. Currachs and naomhógs are among the only sea craft built upside down, and the expertise dates back generations. Keith learned all of this and a. lot more when he found himself working on a Dunfanaghy currach over 16 weeks. He was Cork City Library eco-poet in residence from 2022 to 2023 when he was drawn to the work of Meitheal Mara. He learned about carpen...