My best friend in school and college, Maria Gillis, reminded me recently that when we were in sixth year in Mount St Anne’s, during one religion class I asked our teacher if Jesus was a virgin. Maria remembers ‘everyone in the class holding their collective breath, waiting for lightning to strike’, and our lovely teacher, John Garvey, calmly replying that there was no mention in the Bible of Jesus ‘having a relationship’. I have zero memory of that and cannot …
Author: Guest Author
I began my writing life with novels and plays and had success with three books, Priest, The Trouble with Sarah Gullion, and Bird in the Snow, and 6 plays produced …
As a crime writer and a huge crime reader, I love nothing more than discovering new authors and hearing about how my favourite writers put a book together – where …
By Ciarán Murphy My experience of hurling as a young boy was not too uncommon. I loved it, I loved watching it, the best players in the country were heroes to …
By John Banville I have a thing against Venice. In fact, I have a number of things against Venice. The avarice. The tourists. The smells. Some years ago I was …
The art of discovering a favourite book by Jessica Harrison, Publishing Director of Penguin Classics. How do you choose a favourite book? Is it the novel you discovered as a …
Memories collide to create the inspiration for The Museum of Lost Umbrellas Back in 2020 I woke up one morning with a dream still swimming in my head: an isolated …
I think that anybody who has ever worked in a shop has been granted a perspective on the world that is unique. A secret code understood only by those of …
It Should Have Been You is about a woman named Susan who writes a mean, gossipy message to her sisters all about a neighbour, Celeste, who gets on her nerves. …
The Kindness of Strangers. In an increasingly volatile world, I’ve been thinking about kindness. What does it mean? And why is it important. My new novel, Two Kinds of Stranger, …
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