Tayari Jones: ‘I used to be very suspicious of writers who said the story chose them’
The award-winning US author ‘refused to write historically’, but Kin, her new novel, is set in the 1960s. She explains why
Women writers
Sarah Crossan: ‘Meeting amazing teenagers was a highlight of being Laureate na nÓg’
Author’s new novel Gone for Good is one of three verse thrillers and is based in the Adirondack mountains
Author Mary Costello: ‘Gaza has disabled me. I think, how could I go into a room and make up stories?’
As her latest novel is published, the acclaimed Irish author has turned her attention to non-fiction, still writing ‘what obsesses, consumes and distresses’ her
Author Henrietta McKervey: ‘I do like a good murder’
Author’s new novel, The Woman in the Water, is inspired by Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca
Irish myths for modern women: ‘I grew up thinking my name brings sorrow to all men’
Banshee is a new collection of stories by contemporary women authors that retell Ireland’s myths and legends through a feminist lens
Colm Tóibín on the writer Mary Lavin: She removed the props by which we might read her women easily
The great short-story writer’s female protagonists often do the opposite of what they intend. Being unmoored by loss affects their every thought
56 Days author Catherine Ryan Howard: ‘The premiere of the Amazon show ‘was just pure joy’
Prior to streaming, the trailer for Amazon Prime’s adaptation of Ryan Howard’s novel 56 Days had more than 78m views. It’s a ‘fever dream’ for her
Edel Coffey: ‘I didn’t touch my book deal money for a year. I was afraid they’d made a mistake’
Now three books in, as she says, the author and journalist spent many years as a ‘shadow artist’, circling the thing she loved
Elly Griffiths: ‘A magic trick is like a crime novel: lots of misdirection before the final reveal’
The author on new book The Killing Time, writing ‘kick-ass older women’, and her fascination with Victorian times
Madeleine Gray: ‘When I was a kid I was a real b**ch to my stepmother. Not because I didn’t like her’
The Australian author on her piercing coming-of-age novel Chosen family, nonbiological family bonds, and teenage queer identity
Madeline Cash: ‘Greater truths are often best articulated through humour. The fool can make real change’
The author on her debut novel Lost Lambs, tech billionaires, and the worst things about London
Barbara Pym is Jane Austen with a side of jumble sales, public transport and laugh-out-loud one-liners
Her dour, unflinching portraits of women doing their level best not to lose any part of themselves reek of real life
Tanya Sweeney: ‘It was a massively stressful time... I fell into a bit of a depression’
Journalist’s debut novel is being pitched as Baby Reindeer from the stalker’s perspective
Caroline Grace-Cassidy on fate: ‘Let’s all believe that our World Cup place is meant to be’
The author on her new Christmas novel; her hopes of it becoming a Hallmark movie; and her belief in fate
Following in Agatha Christie’s footsteps on the Isle of Man: No archive could ever get me as close to her experience
In 1930 the detective novelist was commissioned to set a treasure hunt on the island enticing tourists to visit
Roddy Doyle: ‘I got a phone call from one of the New Yorker’s famous fact-checkers’
Authors Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Colin Barrett and Belinda McKeon reflect on the Irish relationship with the magazine ahead of an Abbey Theatre celebration
‘It’s a phenomenon - we’re very privileged’: Contemporary Irish women writers celebrated at symposium in Mexico
Irish studies programme in Mexico has introduced students to writers such as Sally Rooney and Claire Keegan
50 years of women’s writing: The 21st century – a boom time... or is it?
Irish women writers’ success would be a cause for celebration, were it not for those pesky figures
Irish women ghost writers: Rediscovering lost voices
Jen Herron discovered Irish women ghost writers in anthologies, then another in her own attic
In the 1980s I loved many men. I’d completely overlooked the women
Our series celebrating 50 years of women’s writing surveys the fiction, poetry and nonfiction of the early 1980s
A Spell of Good Things by Ayòbámi Adébáyò: An intimate portrait of poverty and wealth in Nigeria
Follow-up to much-admired debut Stay with Me focuses on characters from opposite sides of the track
‘He could feel her breasts, ripe yet firm’: Men miswrite women. In the late 1970s it was time to create a feminist tradition
Our series celebrating 50 years of women’s writing surveys the fiction, poetry and nonfiction of the second half of the 1970s
From Toni Morrison to Edna O’Brien and Nawal El Saadawi: 50 years of the best in women’s writing
These are the authors who exposed the patriarchal bias in English literature in the 1970s
In praise of Jennifer Johnston
Irish Times Blook Club: Novelist has chronicled the family across a century of troubled Irish history
In praise of Biddy Jenkinson, by Caitlín Nic Íomhair
The Irish language poet is famously private, but her work is anything but witholding, full of love and laughter, amazement and hope
In praise of Anne Haverty by Manchán Magan
Irish women writers: ‘A skilled wordsmith capable of wielding an inked scalpel to delightful and dastardly effect’
In praise of Nuala Ní Chonchúir by Cathy Dillon
Irish Women Writers: ‘Ní Chonchúir doesn’t shrink from tackling life’s pain, compromises and savagery, but her rich, original imagery captures its sensual delights also’
In praise of Iris Murdoch, by Ian d’Alton
Irish Women Writers: one of the great writers in English, her relationship as a southern Protestant exile with the land of her birth, as explored in both her fiction and personal life, was conflicted but fascinating
An Irish literary set that was more Bloomsbury than barstool
The Women Writers’ Club hung out in Robert’s Cafe and Jammet’s, not McDaid’s or the Palace Bar, but this radical group fostered a distinctive, modern and decidedly female literary canon
In praise of Eilís Dillon, by Robert Dunbar
Celebrating Irish women writers: ‘she conveys a poetic, often elegiac, sense of place and portrays characters with richness and depth’
In praise of Medbh McGuckian, by Adrienne Leavy
Celebrating Irish women writers: ‘she challenges stereotypical representations of femininity and interrogates nationalist tropes of Ireland as woman’
In praise of Mary Anne Sadlier, a literary figurehead of Catholic North America
Celebrating Irish women writers: ‘she gave voice to the preoccupations of a large section of the Irish-American community’
In praise of Mary O’Donnell, by Eamon Maher
Celebrating Irish women writers: ‘Rather than constantly dealing with the same material and the same human dilemmas, she seeks out new horizons’
‘I loved your Irish women writers poster – here’s one I made earlier’
Mary Shine had a pleasant surprise when she opened The Irish Times last Saturday. Our poster brought back happy memories of her own project, which she is delighted to share
Crosswords & Puzzles
Crosswords & puzzles to keep you challenged and entertained
Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
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