In The Irish Times tomorrow, Catherine Airey tells Nadine O’Regan about her debut novel, Confessions. Darragh Geraghty talks to the experts about the art of the audiobooks. Toner Quinn writes about growing up as the son of the film-maker Bob Quinn, whose selected writings, Count Me Out, he has edited and which will be published next month. Read for wonder, sorrow or joy, not grim self-improvement, writes Sarah Moss in her column. And there is a Q&A with Jon Ransom about his two Polari Prize winning novels, The Gallopers and The Whale Tattoo.

Reviews are Paul Sweeney on Thomas Piketty’s Nature, Culture and Inequality and Piketty and Michael Sandel’s Equality: What It Means and Why It Matters; Brian Hanley on Fragments of Victory: the Contemporary Irish Left, edited by Oisín Gilmore and David Landy; Oliver Farry on I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again: Turning our Family Trauma of Chemical Submission into a Collective Fight by Caroline Darian; Claire Hennessy on the best new YA fiction; Kevin Power on Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell; Claire Adam on Another Man in the Street by Caryl Philips; Kristen Poli on Good Girl by Aria Aber; Edel Coffey on The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick; John Boyne on Season by George Harrison & Greatest of All Time by Alex Allison; Browser; Daniel Carey on Joe Lee: A Tract for Our Times: A Retrospective on Joe Lee’s Ireland 1912–1985; and Patsy McGarry on Hope by Pope Francis.

This weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer is Displeasure Island by Alice Bell, just €5.99, a €6 saving.

Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong, Bodies by Christine Anne Foley, No Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald and Night Swimmers by Roisin Maguire have been shortlisted for the annual Kate O’Brien Award for a debut work from an Irish woman author.

The award will be presented as part of the 41st annual Limerick Literary Festival in honour of Kate O’Brien, which takes place from February 21st to 23rd at the Belltable in Limerick City.

“This year we had 16 debut books submitted for consideration, the most we have ever had,” judge Vivienne McKechnie said. “It is wonderful to see such talent emerging and to read the excellent debut novels and short stories produced by Irish woman writers. It was a difficult task to come up with a shortlist and I would like to congratulate all 16 writers for well-written, thought-provoking books on a wide range of themes.”

The judges are committee member Marie Hackett, poet and committee member Vivienne McKechnie, writer and children’s book buyer for Kenny’s Bookshop Grainne O’Brien, Director of Narrative 4 James Lawlor and novelist Dan Mooney. The award comes with a €2,000 cash Prize sponsored by Bill and Denise Whelan.

The 2025 Festival will open with an intimate evening of words and music featuring Limerick opera singer Sarah Ellen Murphy accompanied by pianist Irina Dernova. Writers taking part include Diarmuid Johnson, Anna Abney, Rose Servitova, Karen Fitzgibbon, Christine Dwyer Hickey and Delphine Minoui alongside poets Ciarain O’Driscoll, Lionel Poiraudeau, Jo Slade and Vivienne McKechnie. There will also be a Heaney in Translation event, presented by Niall MacMonagle. The festival will close on Sunday 23rd with an interview with the author, journalist and broadcaster David McWilliams.

Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times (2020) and The Happy Couple (2023), has been announced as the inaugural IPUT Writer-in-Residence at Wilton Park, Dublin as selected by Colm Tóibín.

Located in an elegant refurbished Georgian apartment at Wilton Park, the residency has views across the Grand Canal and the statue of Patrick Kavanagh, and of Mary Lavin Place, the first public square named in honour of an Irish woman writer. The area, known as Baggotonia, is rich with literary connections.

Dolan is one of an exciting generation of Irish writers gaining acclaim on the international stage, and the residency gives her the chance to return to live in her home city for the first time since graduating from Trinity College in 2016. She plans to use the time to finalise her third novel, contribute to the city’s arts and literary events, and begin a new project.

The IPUT Writer-in-Residence, which includes a generous stipend, will be awarded on an annual basis to a published writer to enable them to live and make work in Dublin, and contribute to the life of the city, a Unesco World City of Literature.

“We are delighted to announce Naoise Dolan as our first Writer-in-Residence at Wilton Park,” Niall Gaffney, CEO of IPUT Real Estate, said. “We hope Naoise will enjoy working and living in this peaceful and scenic part of the city where she can derive great inspiration from the neighbourhood. We have created the residency because we believe that cities are only great when there is space for arts and culture to thrive. We expect this will be a productive and enriching experience for Naoise who joins a long list of writers who previously lived in this area. The late Mary Lavin chose nearby Lad Lane to raise her family and just recently we named Mary Lavin Place at Wilton Park in her honour.”

Tóibín said: “The apartment in Wilton Place that IPUT has created for a writer is a beautiful and inspiring space in an area of Dublin that has a rich literary history. IPUT and Niall Gaffney deserve great credit for their generosity and vision, for seeing their opportunity and knowing how much it will mean for Naoise Dolan and for writers of the future.”

Dolan said: “This residency will enable me to live and write in Dublin, my home city, for the first time in eight years. I’m very grateful to IPUT for giving me the time and space to develop my practice here. A writer’s greatest luxury is time, so to have a year of it means the world to me; I’ll do my best to use it well. It’s an especial honour to have been chosen in consultation with Colm Tóibín, whom I admire both for the psychological depth and precision-strike prose of his own novels, and for how generously he engages with the work of new Irish writers.”

The recipient of the 2026 Writer-in-Residence Award will be announced later this year. The residence joins IPUT’s long-running Artists’ Studios at Wilton Park as part of the company’s citywide arts and culture initiatives. Programmed by the Royal Hibernian Academy, the Wilton Park Studios give dedicated space in the city centre to visual artists, rent free. This year, the Studios move to a permanent bespoke home at 2 Wilton Park.

The oldest University Press in Ireland, Cork University Press, celebrates its 100th birthday this year and President Michael D Higgins was presented with one of its landmark publications at a special event in Áras an Uachtaráin this week.

Founded in 1925 by Alfred O’Rahilly with a mission to stimulate Irish learning, Cork University Press, the publishing arm of University College Cork, has supported the rise of Irish studies globally with landmark publications including Daniel Corkery’s Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature (1931); Bridget G MacCarthy’s Women Writers (1944); James Handley’s The Irish in Scotland (1945); David Gwynn Morgan A Judgment Too Far (2002); Fintan Vallely’s Companion to Irish Traditional Music (1999, 2011, 2024); as well as pioneering series, Undercurrents, Ireland into Film.

Scholars and public figures such as Nell McCafferty, Ivor Browne, Denis Cotter, Terry Eagleton, Rachel Allen, Catherine Fulvio, June Levine, Timothy O’Neill and Kevin Whelan have all had works published with the press. To celebrate a centenary of publishing at Cork University Press a year-long programme of events including exhibitions, events and symposia will soon be announced.

President Higgins said: “I am delighted to have the opportunity of marking the centenary of the Cork University Press, the publishing arm of University College Cork. Since its foundation by Alfred O’Rahilly in 1925, Cork University Press has played an invaluable role in developing and stimulating learning, both in Ireland and across the world, including bringing attention to a number of neglected areas of Irish study, resulting in a rich and distinctive body of work.

“May I recognise especially the wonderful achievement of the Atlas series, including the Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, the Atlas of the Irish Revolution, and the most recent publication in this series, the Atlas of the Irish Civil War. I was honoured to be invited to contribute a foreword to both the Atlas of the Irish Revolution and the Atlas of the Irish Civil War.

“The Atlas series has made a big contribution not only in providing public access to a diverse consideration of a range of important subjects, but also provided an important broadening of the historiography and opportunities for reconsideration. In particular, we owe the Cork University Press a debt of thanks for its inclusion of new scholars and of a number of areas of Irish study and scholarship, including perspectives and voices, which merited greater attention.”

Prof John O’Halloran, President of UCC, said: “After a turbulent period in Irish history, Cork University Press was established with the single goal of supporting scholarly interest in Irish studies. It is testament to all those who have worked there and all those who have published with this magnificent press that today there exists a rich global field of Irish studies. This year we look forward to recognising the valuable role Cork University Press has played in furthering insight and interest for the past 100 years.”

Sinéad Neville, Head of Publishing at CUP, said: “With 15-20 new books and editions per year and a backlist of almost 600 active titles, Cork University Press remains today a publishing powerhouse. For a university press to endure for so long is testament to the importance that the University places on ensuring scholarly output in the arts, humanities and social sciences reaches as wide an audience as possible.”