The Arts Council Podcast The Arts Council | An Chomhairle Ealaíon

The May Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Megan Nolan about her novel 'Ordinary Human Failings'.

"Megan Nolan’s novel tells the story of the Green family who move from Ireland to London in the early 1990s. 'Where Nolan really excels is in the delineation of complex, sometimes contradictory interior states, the water we all swim in and call "reality",' writes The Financial Times." - Colm Tóibín

Megan Nolan was born in 1990 in Waterford, Ireland and is currently based in London. Her essays and reviews have been published by The New York Times, White Review, The Guardian and Frieze amongst others. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2021 and was the recipient of a Betty Trask Award, shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second novel, Ordinary Human Failings, was published in 2023 and is shortlisted for the inaugural Nero Book Awards, for fiction and longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize.

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The April Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Deirdre Madden about her novel ‘Molly Fox’s Birthday’.

“It is the height of summer, and celebrated actor Molly Fox has loaned her house in Dublin to a friend while she is away performing in New York. Set over a single midsummer’s day, Molly Fox’s Birthday is a mischievous, insightful novel about a turning point - a moment when past and future suddenly appear in a new light. – Colm Tóibín
Deirdre Madden is a novelist. She has published eight novels for adults, including Authenticity, Molly Fox’s Birthday, and most recently Time Present and Time Past. She has won many awards for her work, including The Rooney Prize, The Hennessy Award, and The Somerset Maugham Award. For the first of her three novels for children, she won the Eilis Dillon Award. All her work is published by Faber and Faber and has been widely anthologised. Her novels have also been translated into several languages, including French, Italian and German. She studied English at Trinity College Dublin and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. In 1997 she was Writer Fellow at Trinity, and since 2004 she has been teaching Creative Writing to undergraduates and on the MPhil programme in the Oscar Wilde Centre. She is a member of Aosdána

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The March Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Paul Murray about his novel ‘The Bee Sting’
“Paul Murray’s novel is narrated by four members of the Barnes family, Dickie who runs a car showroom, his wife Imelda, and their children Cassie and PJ. The Guardian has written that Murray ‘is brilliant on fathers and sons, sibling rivalry, grief, selfsabotage and self-denial, as well as the terrible weakness humans have for magical thinking…’” — Colm Tóibín
Paul Murray was born in Dublin and is the author of four acclaimed novels. An Evening of Long Goodbyes (2003) was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. Skippy Dies (2010) was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Costa Book. The Mark and the Void (2015) won the Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. The Bee Sting, published in 2023, won the An Post Irish Book of the Year (2023) and the Nero Book Award (2024). It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Kirkus Prize and the Writers’ Prize (2024). It was one of the Top Ten Best Books of 2023 in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and named a Best Book of the Year by The Irish Times, The New Yorker, Time, The Independent, and others. Paul’s stories and journalism have appeared in New York Magazine, Granta, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and The New York Times.
Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The February Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Kevin Curran about his novel ‘Youth’
“Kevin Curran’s novel deals with the lives of four teenagers in Balbriggan, Ireland’s most diverse town. When the protagonists intersect, the connections they make will change the course of their lives. ‘Irish-English has always been wild,’ Roddy Doyle has written in The Irish Times. ‘Youth, at its liveliest, seems to be telling us that we’re only starting.’” — Colm Tóibín
Kevin Curran is from Balbriggan and has been a secondary-school teacher in his hometown for over a decade. Youth, his third novel, was published to critical acclaim in 2023. His first novel, Beatsploitation (2013), brought him national attention due to his depiction of Ireland’s new multicultural landscape. He has also published a second novel, Citizens (2016), and numerous short stories in major anthologies and literary journals such as The Stinging Fly. His fiction largely concentrates on working class life in the Dublin suburbs. He has also written non-fiction for The Guardian and The Observer.
Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The January Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Claire Kilroy about her novel ‘Soldier Sailor’
“Claire Kilroy’s first novel in more than a decade deals with the early days and nights of motherhood. ‘Soldier Sailor is a resonant and important book,’ Sarah Gilmartin has written in The Irish Times, ‘vital in all senses of the word, a flare sent up from the shores of early motherhood, a lesson in surviving the wilderness.’” — Colm Tóibín
Claire Kilroy is the author of five novels, All Summer (Faber, 2003), Tenderwire (Faber, 2006), All Names Have Been Changed (Faber, 2009), and The Devil I Know (Faber, 2012). In 2023, after an eleven year silence, her fifth novel, Soldier Sailor, about the early years of motherhood, was published to universal acclaim. It was named a Best Book by The Sunday Times, The Irish Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Telegraph, The New Statesman, The Irish Independent and The Independent. Kilroy won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2004 and has been shortlisted many times for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and the Irish Book Awards. She studied at Trinity College and lives in Dublin.


Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-Club/

The December Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Mike McCormack about his novel 'This Plague of Souls'.

“In the Irish Times preview of the best novels forthcoming in 2023, Martin Doyle writes: ‘The prospect of a new novel [by Mike McCormack] is one to savour. Part roman noir, part metaphysical thriller, This Plague of Souls deals with how we might mend the world – and is the story of a man who would let the world go to hell if he could keep his family together.” — Colm Tóibín

Mike McCormack comes from the west of Ireland and is the author of two
collections of short stories Getting it in the Head and Forensic Songs, and three novels Crowe’s Requiem, Notes from a Coma and Solar Bones.

In 1996 he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Literature and Getting it in the Head was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In 2006 Notes from a Coma was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award.

In 2016 Solar Bones was awarded the Goldsmiths Prize and the Bord Gais Energy Irish Novel of the Year and Book of the Year; it was also long-listed for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. In 2018 it was awarded the International Dublin Literary Award. He is a member of Aosdána.

Learn more about the Art of Reading Book Club and the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/The-Art-of-Reading-Book-