Book Club Podcast

Why do so many readers tell writer Neil Hegarty that he captured their own family dynamic in his debut novel Inch Levels? Perhaps the burial of past traumas was so common an enterprise in Ireland among a certain generation, it meant many of the next generation grew up absorbing the bleak effects of this silence – the theme of Hegarty’s book. In this month’s Irish Times Book Club podcast, recorded live at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin, he tells us about the genesis of Inch Levels, a story of family secrecies, difficult dependencies and mutually enforced repressions. The novel has been praised for vividly evoking the wild beauty of the Lough Swilly shoreline – Hegarty, who is from Derry, talks about the importance of using location and landscape to map the mental processes of his characters. He also explains why a forgotten wartime tragedy was the starting point for this book, set between the 1930s and 1980s, tells us about the surprise Brexit interpretation that followed its publication in 2016 an

This month's novel is Married Quarters by Shane Connaughton. Books Editor Martin Doyle interviewed him at the West Cork Literary Festival.

Welcome to the Irish Times Book Club podcast for June 2017. If this is your first time listening, you might be wondering how this works. Each month we run a series of articles on irishtimes.com on a chosen author. And at the end of each month we hold a public interview with that author at The Irish Writer's Centre on Parnell Square here in Dublin. It's free to attend. This month our chosen author is Jennifer Johnston. Jennifer's first novel The Captains and the Kings was published in 1972 when she was 42. Her latest work, Naming the Stars, a haunting tale of love, loss and memory, which was published by Tinder Press last year. Literary Correspondent Eileen Battersby interviewed Jennifer at The Irish Writer's Centre. Check irishtimes.com for information about upcoming Book Club events.

This week the Man Booker International Prize, awarded for fiction translated in English, was won by David Grossman and his translator Jessica Cohen for his novel A Horse Walks Into a Bar. They both spoke to Irish Times Literary Correspondent Eileen Battersby.

Laura Slattery interviews EM Reapy about her novel Red Dirt at The Irish Writer's Centre. www.irishwriterscentre.ie www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-book-club

Eileen Battersby interviews Conor O'Callaghan about his novel Nothing on Earth at The Irish Writer's Centre. https://irishwriterscentre.ie http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-book-club

Irish Times literary correspondent Eileen Battersby joins Martin Doyle for a discussion about the shortlist of nominees for the International Dublin Literary Award, of which Anne Enright is the only Irish writer.

Michael Collins, the Man Booker and International Dublin Literary Award shortlisted author, who last year ran a marathon a day for a month to raise awareness of Canada’s Irish Famine victims, talks to Irish Times Books Editor Martin Doyle about his career spanning Ireland and Rust Belt America. This conversation took place at the Ennis Book Club Festival in Co. Clare and is brought to you in association with the Irish Writers Centre.

Eileen Battersby talks to Martin Doyle about the works included on the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for fiction in English translation, and some of the notable omissions.

Visitors are reminded that they are about to enter the Wunderkammer, a floating chamber where normal spacetime conventions no longer apply… Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland has been described by Claire Kilroy as a book about how we process trauma and by Rosemary Jenkinson as less of an airport novel, more of a “rocket launch pad novel”. In a podcast recorded at the Irish Writers Centre in February, The Irish Times talks to its author, Mia Gallagher, about how and why she wrote this strangely compelling and compellingly strange epic. The writer and actor discusses using 1970s Dublin as a setting, the creation of her trans woman character Georgia Madden and why she wanted to write about the experiences of German speakers in the Sudetenland in the aftermath of the Second World War. The Irish Times Book Club podcast is produced in association with the Irish Writers Centre. If you would like to attend a recording of the book club podcast, visit www.irishwriterscentre.ie/irishtimesbookclub. You can als

To celebrate the centenary of the birth of author and New Yorker magazine staff writer Maeve Brennan, whose work went largely unnoticed here until after her death, Irish Times books editor Martin Doyle and journalist Patrick Freyne talked to her biographer Angela Bourke.

Anakana Schofield talks to Laura Slattery about Martin John, "a novel about compulsion, poverty and sexual deviance".

Welcome to the Irish Times Book Club podcast, recorded earlier this month in association with the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin’s Parnell Square. This month’s title is Solar Bones by Mike McCormack, currently shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. It is 20 years since McCormack’s debut collection of stories, Getting it in the Head, won him the prestigious Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Two years later came his fist novel, Crowe’s Requiem, then a seven-year gap to its follow up, Notes from A Coma, described by John Waters as the best Irish novel of the decade, then another seven-year gap before his second collection, Forensic Songs in 2012.

This month's book club features Lucy Caldwell, author of Multitudes, in conversation with Laura Slattery.

This month's podcast.

Joanna Walsh, author of Vertigo, talks to Laura Slattery in the Irish Writers’ Centre about how she writes, her distinctive take on the short story, women writers and erotica

Henrietta McKervey reads an extract from her second novel, The Heart of Everything, and discusses with Martin Doyle, assistant literary editor of The Irish Times, its themes of memory and its loss, family relationships and dementia .

Rob Doyle discusses his collection of inter-linked fictions, This is the Ritual, his follow-up to his successful debut, Here are the Young Men, with Laura Slattery, co-host of the Irish Times Book Club podcast, in front of a live audience at the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin. The wide-ranging interview explores the author’s autobiographical approach to writing, the writers who populate his fictions and his desire to test boundaries.

The Glorious Heresies author Lisa McInerney talks to Martin Doyle

Mrs Engels author Gavin McCrea talks to Laura Slattery.