Charlie Hart
Living in London, Charlie Hart was near breaking point. He’d started various businesses but had given up on them the moment they showed signs of being successful. Deep in grief, after the death of the father…
Sue Rainsford
Sue has always written prose. “I’ve always read widely too. Every Sunday we went to Waterstones and Hodges Figgis. I read literary fiction with a dash of supernatural YA. I loved Edgar Allen Poe at 10,…
Donal Ryan
Donal Ryan has absolutely no ambitions. Having studied as an engineer, then a lawyer, he became a civil servant. Happy in his job for twenty years, he only sought promotion twice, gaining it, and moving up…
Denyse Woods
Cork writer, Denyse Woods, arrives for our Dublin meeting wearing black – her exotic jewellery reflecting her passion for the Arab world. She’s travelled there extensively and, listening, over the years, to stories of the Jinn…
Jade Sharma
As a child Jade wanted to be a comedian. She used humour to get her mum to laugh when she was in a bad mood. She spent her teenage years in Japan. “It was the perfect…
Alison Healy
As a child Alison wanted to be Enid Blighton. “I practised her signature. It’s always been at the back of my mind to write a children’s book.” Alison grew up on a small farm in County…
Books Ireland Debut Roundup, May 2018
The Ruin Dervla McTiernan. Sphere. Garda Cormac Reilly feels stuck. Thirty years into a promising career, he leaves his job in the Special Detective Unit’s anti-terrorist division in Dublin, and follows his scientist wife, Emma, to…
Kevin Doyle
Following a degree, and a Masters in Science, Kevin worked in the chemical industry for five years, before moving to the United States. “I was considering taking another degree, but I wasn’t sure it was what…
Cormac O’Keefe
Cormac started his career in journalism when he was at university, editing first, ‘Probe,’ then the UCD Student Union News. “I then worked for Big Issue for a year, before returning to university to take a…
Catherine Ryan Howard
The day Catherine Ryan Howard signed her first ever book deal started well. Rising at four, she flew to London, and celebrated with her new publishers over several glasses of champagne. She was in seventh heaven….
AJ Pearce
When AJ was a teenager, she wanted to be a poet. “I wrote very bad poems. I loved writing stories, too, and going to the library. I was a very bookish child.” AJ Worked in marketing….
Paula Byrne
From a large, Catholic family, Paula started her working life as a schoolteacher. “I taught A Level English in an all boys grammar school, and then at a college of education.” Turning to academia, she gained…