Tore Renberg: ‘We will prevail. We will write. People will read. Literature is essential’The Norwegian bestselling author on being inspired by Dostoyevsky and Adrian Mole, and his very strong desire for fiction after five quite autobiographical novelsThu Oct 01 2015 - 14:50
Kati Hiekkapelto: ‘I have visited so many cultures, minds and emotions through reading’‘I don’t particularly like doing background research. I would love just to imagine everything. However, since I write about police work, I have to get the facts straight’Tue Sept 22 2015 - 16:04
Hilary Mantel’s Assassination of Margaret Thatcher shortlisted for BBC story awardMark Haddon, Jonathan Buckley, Frances Leviston and Jeremy Page are also in the running for £15,000 awardThu Sept 17 2015 - 15:37
Make Them Visible: Oxfam Ireland on Culture NightNew work by Belinda McKeon, Gerald Dawe and Jan Carson: a sneak preview of Oxfam Books’ photo exhibition and evening of readings highlighting the lives of displaced people and refugeesThu Sept 17 2015 - 14:30
Agatha Christie: genius or hack? Crime writers pass judgment and pick favouritesJohn Banville, Sinead Crowley, Liz Nugent, Sophie Hannah, Val McDermid, Christie scholar John Curran and more crime writers give their take on the Queen of CrimeWed Sept 16 2015 - 10:00
Asking For It by Louise O’Neill is the new Irish Times Book Club choiceA searing account of a rape and its aftermath in a close-knit Irish community, Asking For It looks set to enjoy the crossover success of O’Neill’s YA debut, Only Ever YoursMon Sept 14 2015 - 12:15
Irish writers respond to refugee crisis for Oxfam Ireland Culture Night projectNew work by Eoin McNamee, Nuala Ní Chonchúir and Rita Ann Higgins: a sneak preview of Make Them Visible, a photo exhibition and evening of readings highlighting the lives of displaced people and refugeesThu Sept 10 2015 - 14:40
New Seamus Heaney work to be published next yearVerse translation of Virgil’s Aeneid: Book VI was given impetus by death of poet’s fatherThu Sept 10 2015 - 12:45
Donal Ryan ‘blown away’ by winner of this year’s €3,000 Moth short story prizeTexan author Marc Phillips ‘walked away from writing to make the mistakes necessary for new stories’Tue Sept 08 2015 - 16:35
Geoff Mulligan on Joseph O’Connor: ‘Joe has never been afraid of challenges’Authors & Editors – Joseph O’Connor on Geoff Mulligan: ‘Geoff took a manuscript that was cripplingly long and unwieldy and helped me sculpt it into a literary novel that is also a page-turner’Tue Sept 01 2015 - 13:15
Move over, Morrissey: the musicians who moonlight as writers, and vice versaMorrissey is far from the first performer to turn to prose, or writer who can play. Paul Muldoon, Julian Gough, Ferdia MacAnna, Billy Roche and Brendan Graham explore the transition and we profile a host of othersMon Aug 31 2015 - 11:00
Ann O’Loughlin’s The Ballroom Cafe is surprise Irish hit on Amazon 2015 top 20Debut novel about forced illegal adoptions from Ireland to the US has over 150,000 ebook sales in just three months, making it this year’s bestselling Irish digital bookWed Aug 26 2015 - 16:50
The 100 best novels in English? Irish writers and critics have their sayJulian Gough, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and a host of others respond to Robert McCrum’s ‘100 greatest novels written in English’. Read on for lively debate and hot book tipsThu Aug 20 2015 - 12:00
The secret lives of the priests in Father TedWhat links the classic sitcom to The Smiths, Freddie Mercury, Star Wars, Trainspotting, Ballykissangel, Emmerdale and the cream of Irish journalism? Martin Doyle confesses allWed Jul 29 2015 - 11:00
Christine Dwyer Hickey Q&A: my influences, from Mrs Dalloway to Janice Galloway‘There is no better way to appreciate another culture or to begin to understand the lives of others than through a well-written novel’Fri Jul 24 2015 - 09:31
Colm Tóibín wins Hawthornden Prize for ‘Nora Webster’Irish writer awarded one of literature’s oldest and most prestigious awards for novelThu Jul 23 2015 - 01:00
Reviewing Irish books: the good, the bad and the ugly truthA scathing review of Paul Murray’s new novel was the talk of literary circles. But do too many Irish reviewers pull their punches? And what’s it like to get a bad review? We asked the expertsThu Jul 16 2015 - 14:25
The Lives of Women by Christine Dwyer Hickey is the new Irish Times Book Club pickA modern Valley of the Squinting Windows moved from small-town Ireland to suburbiaTue Jul 07 2015 - 09:30
Eoin McNamee: a capital crime writerA decade after writing The Blue Tango about a real-life murder, the author revisited another crime scene in Orchid Blue. Martin Doyle interviews a true great of true crimeFri Jun 26 2015 - 10:45
Roy Foster to curate WB Yeats evening at National Concert HallBeautiful Lofty Things on September 12th, directed by Alan Gilsenan, will feature John Banville, Eavan Boland, Lisa Dwan, John Montague, Iarla Ó Lionáird and Martin HayesThu Jun 25 2015 - 10:26
Jonathan Bardon Q&A: ‘good history is not enough: the historian also has a duty to tell it well’‘Read your first drafts out loud to yourself, as if you were giving a sermon – a great way to show up areas in need of improvement’Wed Jun 24 2015 - 10:45
Stars pay tribute to Oscar-winning composer James HornerJohn Boyne, Celine Dion and Russell Crowe express their sadness at tragic deathTue Jun 23 2015 - 15:00
Ragnar Jónasson Q&A: ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd had a great impact on me’‘The truth isn’t to be found in books, not even good books, but in people who have a kind heart’Mon Jun 22 2015 - 09:43
Maria Duffy Q&A: ‘I can get a week’s work done between 1am and 7am’‘No matter what other books I write, that first one will always be very special to me’Fri Jun 19 2015 - 00:43
Mark Billingham Q&A: ‘Cops solving crimes with supernatural powers strikes me as cheating’‘I read Jaws and The Godfather back to back one summer when I was 14 and was suddenly aware of how powerful fiction could be. Also, they both had dirty bits’Wed Jun 17 2015 - 14:24
Paul McVeigh Q&A: ‘It’s ironic the two books I did the most research for I ended up not writing’‘When I read Anaïs Nin’s exposing personal enquiries into emotion and excavations of the truth, it transformed my concept of the territory of the written word’Mon Jun 15 2015 - 15:00
Glenn Patterson Q&A: ‘I will not live long enough to read the half of what I want to’'What was the first book to make an impression on me? The Bible. I had nightmares for weeks'Wed Jun 10 2015 - 15:48
Three Irish poets shortlisted for £10,000 Forward PrizeCiaran Carson, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Paul Muldoon in running for Best Collection awardTue Jun 09 2015 - 11:20
Eoin McNamee Q&A: ‘I can’t think of a good piece of funny writing which didn’t turn around and kick you in the teeth’‘When I was young I had a knack for reading things I didn’t really understand and being caught up in their slipstream. I read Brighton Rock when I was 12 or 13’Fri Jun 05 2015 - 11:06
Scottish poet wins new €1,000 Caterpillar children’s poetry prizeRead the winning poem, Don’t Think of an Elephant, by Louise GreigFri Jun 05 2015 - 09:59
Michael Longley wins Griffin International Poetry PrizeBlue Sonoma by Jane Munro is Canadian winner of prizeFri Jun 05 2015 - 09:29
Shortlist revealed for €25,000 Frank O’Connor International Short Story AwardKaren E Bender, Carys Davies, Tony Earley, Kirsty Gunn and Alejandro Zambra on shortlist for world’s richest short story prizeThu Jun 04 2015 - 18:00
Solicitor and author to be questioned over 1974 Birmingham bombings that killed 21West Midlands police want to talk to Kieran Conway about claims in his memoir, Southside Provisional, From Freedom Fighter to the Four CourtsTue Jun 02 2015 - 14:35
Melissa Hill Q&A: ‘The Secret Garden inspired my love of the mystery genre to this day’‘The majority of female mega-selling authors are all severly under-rated and dismissed as unimportant, purely because they write women’s fiction. It’s nuts’Thu May 28 2015 - 13:14
Eoin McNamee’s Blue is the Night wins €15,000 Kerry Group Irish Novel of Year AwardPaul Muldoon wins €5,000 Pigott Poetry Prize for One Thousand Things Worth Knowing at ceremony to mark opening of Listowel Writers’ WeekWed May 27 2015 - 20:00
Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days wins Independent Foreign Fiction PrizePrize celebrates 25 years with first German winner since WG SebaldWed May 27 2015 - 19:45
Jenny Erpenbeck: ‘The greatest discoveries can be made just around the corner’Brought to Book Q&A: Author of The End of Days on the books and authors that have inspired herTue May 26 2015 - 08:00
Blue is the Night by Eoin McNamee is the new Irish Times Book Club choiceWin one of 12 signed copies of what author David Peace called ‘a genuine, original masterpiece’Mon May 25 2015 - 11:50
Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel Q&A: ‘I wrote one of my first novels sitting up a tree’Author from Equatorial Guinea on what he reads and how he writesMon May 25 2015 - 08:00
Africa Day creative writing competition: the winning entriesThe Irish Times, in conjunction with Africa Day organisers Irish Aid, held a competition for writing about Africa by primary and secondary pupils and adults. Read what the winners wroteSun May 24 2015 - 01:00
Oliver Jeffers wins 25th CBI Book of the Year Award for Once Upon an AlphabetLouise O’Neill wins Eilís Dillon Award for a first children’s book for Only Ever YoursTue May 19 2015 - 12:30
Listen to Colm Tóibín’s talk on same-sex relationships and literatureThe Embrace of Love: Being Gay in Ireland Now, a talk the author gave yesterday at Trinity College Dublin, addressed his experience of being a gay man and gay writerFri May 15 2015 - 14:15
Dalkey Archive Press founder John O’Brien is knightedFrench ambassador honours Irish-American publisher at Dublin embassyFri May 15 2015 - 08:45
Emma Healey, Carys Bray and Claire Fuller on Desmond Elliott Prize shortlist‘There’s no age limit on being a sparkling new arrival on the literary scene’Fri May 15 2015 - 08:30
Q&A: Tom Bouman on his debt to Tana French and the importance of empathy‘It is hard to ignore the purported abandonment of narrative artifice in favour of something resembling unflinching, quotidian honesty’Wed May 06 2015 - 08:00
Roddy Doyle adds his Two Pints worth to marriage equality Yes vote campaign‘I am expressing my hope that there is a yes vote and the most useful way for me to do that is to express myself creatively’Fri May 01 2015 - 16:25
Yiyun Li is first woman to win world’s richest short story awardStory of a Chinese nanny nets £30,000 prize – click through to read A Sheltered WomanFri Apr 24 2015 - 21:30
Lisa Bickmore wins €10,000 Ballymaloe Poetry Prize with ode to love and lossRead the winning poem, Eidolon, and the others shortlisted – Fantasia on a Theme by Elvis, the exceptional Disco Jesus and the Wavering Virgins in Berlin, 2011 and Saratoga Passage, August 2014Fri Apr 24 2015 - 15:05
The Irish Times holds writing contest to mark Africa Day on May 24thAdults and children invited to submit short story or poem about African experience in either Africa or Ireland by May 8thTue Apr 21 2015 - 17:55
