Young autistic Irish writers: we want to hear from you! What: Essay between 1000-1500 When: Deadline of Monday 6th April 2026 Where: Send your submissions or queries to irishautisticanthology@gmail.com
More info here: niamhgarvey.com/2026/03/08/s...
@littleislandbooks.bsky.social @newislandbooks.bsky.social
Photo of Bill Whelan, Gethan Dick and Denise Whelan in front of a painting of Kate O'Brien and a banner poster for the Kate O"brien festival. The lighting was brutal but this is the photo the Irish Times ran with.
Extract from the Irish Times book newsletter by Martin Doyle that reads: Gethan Dick has won the 2026 Kate O’Brien Award for her powerful, original and deeply moving debut novel Water in the Desert Fire in the Night, published last year by Tramp Press. She was presented with the €5,000 prize by sponsors Bill and Denise Whelan at the Belltable Theatre as part of the Limerick Literary Festival in honour of Kate O’Brien earlier this week. This year’s award attracted a record 17 submissions. The other shortlisted writers were Elaine Garvey for The Wardrobe Department; Sharon Guard for Assembling Ailish; and Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin for Ordinary Saints. Festival director Vivienne McKechnie said: “It is wonderful to see such accomplished writers and the event at this year’s festival was inspirational as we heard these writers speak eloquently and confidently about their books and the writing process. We, the judges, were taken on many different and interesting journeys. Congratulations to the shortlisted writers and huge congratulations to Gethan Dick, whose novel Water in the Desert Fire in the Night was a very worthy winner.” In an interview with The Irish Times, Dick said her novel was about “an underachieving young woman, a retired midwife and a charismatic Dubliner who set out from London after the end of the world to cycle to a sanctuary in the southern Alps. And it’s about the fact that the thing about the end of the world is that it happens all the time. “It’s about hope, hunger, gold, wolves, Streatham, Cuba, post-apocalyptic feminism, pregnancy and bicycles. It’s about the porousness of the female bodily experience, the challenges of being an empiricist with a sample size of one, what’s worth knowing and what’s worth living and the necessity of irrationality.”
Gethan Dick won the 2026 Kate O'Brien award for her funny, wild optimistic novel about a group of people on a post-apocalyptic road-trip. www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...
But the Mass they don't go to has always been in that church! Now they're going to have to find a new church to not attend, and it just won't be the same.
That would be *justice* of the regular non-mob variety.
Don’t forget the Never Too Late Award from the Bridport Prize which recognises entries from writers over 60 across all categories of prizes.
Link below
Please share :)
I love the people and the vision behind @extrateethmag.bsky.social so it is a real treat to be facilitating an online workshop for them in March. Snap up these places as they’ll go fast.
Cúchullain didn't die defending Ireland from Margaret Thatcher at the Battle Of Clontarf for you to put something other than plain, Catholic sugar on your pancakes
This must also account for Scream Yawn Guy in my office.*
The screeching sound of his yawns are meant to reach across chasms of isolation.
*Very audible in my office from behind the closed door of his office.
Our book, “The World According To Sharks”, is available for pre-order from loads of sources - www.penguin.co.uk/books/473994....
Just realised the acronym for it is TWATS. Too late to change it now. Just have to own it.
A vending machine library, with a sign telling us it is The Little Library (in Irish An Leabharlann Beag).
I love this in Tallaght University Hospital. One day all hospitals will have libraries for bored patients and their families.
All credit to South Dublin Libraries. That’s the kind of innovation we like to see.
When I tell my kids to do something, I always add ‘And when you’ve finished doing that, bring in the dog and put out the cat!’ and they yell ‘Yakety Yak!’
A little taster for you…
@hollowaywriter.bsky.social reading from his debut novel, ‘The Language of Remembering’
The book is available from your local bookshop, as ePub or direct from our website.
More on Patrick at:
www.epoquepress.com/patrick-holl...
#epoquepress #epoquepressauthors
Winners at podium with trophy
Congratulations to Liam Donnelly and Tony Hayes of Hodges Figgis Bookshop, Dublin, who were named The O’Brien Press Booksellers of the Year 2026 at the Bookselling Ireland Conference in Waterford this evening!
@thebookseller.com
We are deeply concerned that Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi has been handed further prison sentences of seven-and-a-half years by an Iranian court and appeal for her release. Re-post please. #FreeNarges @englishpen.bsky.social @peninternational.bsky.social @scottishpen.bsky.social
I sold a book to Jonathan Rhys-Meyers without recognising him. A colleague told me who it was just as he left, and I ran to have a look as he went down the stairs. The loud thudding of my pursuit made him look up and see me, and I wished the floor of Hodges Figgis would open up and swallow me.
#SpéirGorm Aramark also has the contract for lots of DP facilities, and it owns Avoca. Think twice before going for your bougie lunch at Kilmacanogue!
"Classes taught in twelve languages: Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, Croatian, English, Farsi, French, Hindi, Kurdish, Portuguese, Serbian and Spanish."
Awesome writer Jan Carson @jancarsonwrites.bsky.social writes about awesome writer Barbara Pym.
Barbara Pym is Jane Austen with a side of jumble sales, public transport and laugh-out-loud one-liners
www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...
Excited to sign again with @lilliputpress.bsky.social for my next novel Glorious Monsters. Features Mary Shelley of Frankenstein fame, set in 1819 … and Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley are also characters. Out Sep 2026. Here’s me with Antony Farrell of Lilliput #books #histfic
Can’t wait to read it!
This book is utterly amazing, and genuinely original.
'My Fourth Time, We Drowned' is 4.99 pounds on Audible in the UK for January only. The audiobook version includes original audio from reporting I did over those years.
Please consider listening if you haven't already. It (unfortunately) has not stopped being relevant. @4thestatebooks.bsky.social
The best fiction of 2026 to look forward to: Books from Louise Kennedy, Donal Ryan, Sebastian Barry, Maggie O’Farrell, Keith Ridgway, Danielle McLaughlin, Louise Nealon, Sarah Gilmartin, Patrick Freyne, Liz Nugent, Jan Carson, Tana French, Kathleen MacMahon & more
www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...
Good. Quite aside from Walliams being a creep, there are MUCH, MUCH better children’s books out there.
www.thebookseller.com/news/david-w...
Ha! I saw this and thought, yeah but Wallace Shawn is much younger, he can do the sequel.
He’s 82.
E-books are reading.
Comics are reading.
Genre is reading.
Fanfic is reading.
Text-based games are reading.
Audiobooks are reading.
Braille books are reading.
Non-fiction is reading.
Picture books are reading.
There is no single way to read, nor is any reading style more worthy than another.
Happy New Year! 🎉
Walking into 2026 like Victor Laszlo ... 🗃️ #HATM
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOli...
Jean-Paul and Simone?
