West Cork Literary Festival

Jan Carson is a master of the short story form and she released a dazzling new collection of stories in 2024. Jan’s collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses contains bold, tender, surprising stories of youth and innocence, age and experience - and all the spaces in between. Fellow short story writer Thomas Morris was scheduled to be part of this event but was unable to take part on the day. His work and his 2023 story collection Open Up are referenced during this event. This podcast was recorded at West Cork Literary Festival on 17 July 2024 and Jan Carson was in conversation with Oonagh Montague.----------------------------------------------------------------------------Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. She has published three novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019. Jan’s latest novel, The Raptures was published by Doubleday in early 2022 and was subsequently shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her short story collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses was published by Doubleday in April 2024.Mark your calendars and join us in West Cork from 11-18 July 2025. Our 2025 line-up will be released in late March/early April and you can sign up for our newsletter to hear about it first.Support West Cork Literary Festival Become a Friend of West Cork Literary Festival to enjoy priority booking for our highly sought-after festival tickets. In particular, you will be supporting our free events for children and our outreach programmes to allow the festival to be accessible to everyone. Visit our festival bookshop Bantry BookshopFollow us on BlueSky SocialInstagramTwitter/XFacebookSubscribe to our YouTube channel Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tobi Lakmaker's The History of My Sexuality is an irreverent and charmingly chaotic debut about queer sexuality and the highs and lows of your 20s caused a sensation in Europe on first publication. Tobi was named as the new literary talent of 2021 in Vogue magazine in the Netherlands. The novel was published in English in 2024 and his visit to West Cork was supported by the Dutch Foundation for Literature/Nederlands Letterenfonds as part of their New Dutch Writing programme. This podcast was recorded at West Cork Literary Festival on 16 July 2024 and Tobi was in conversation with Sasha de Buyl.----------------------------------------------------------------------------Tobi Lakmaker was born in 1994 and lives in Amsterdam. He writes columns for De Groene Amsterdammer and LINDA.meiden. The History of My Sexuality is his first book. It was translated into English by Kristen Gehrman and published by Granta in January 2024.Tobi Lakmaker’s attendance at West Cork Literary Festival is supported by the Dutch Foundation for Literature/Nederlands Letterenfonds as part of their New Dutch Writing programme. Mark your calendars and join us in West Cork from 11-18 July 2025. Our 2025 line-up will be released in late March/early April and you can sign up for our newsletter to hear about it first.Support West Cork Literary Festival Become a Friend of West Cork Literary Festival to enjoy priority booking for our highly sought-after festival tickets. In particular, you will be supporting our free events for children and our outreach programmes to allow the festival to be accessible to everyone. Visit our festival bookshop Bantry BookshopFollow us on BlueSky SocialInstagramTwitter/XFacebookSubscribe to our YouTube channel Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2024 saw the publication of two highly anticipated debut novels by acclaimed Irish writers. Hagstone is the debut novel from award-winning essayist and editor of short story anthologies, Sinéad Gleeson, and Breakdown is written by Cathy Sweeney, an author best-known for her short stories. This podcast was recorded at West Cork Literary Festival on 18 July 2024 and Sinéad and Cathy were in conversation with fellow author Colin Barrett.----------------------------------------------------------------------------Sinéad Gleeson’s essay collection Constellations: Reflections from Life was published by Picador in 2019 and won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at 2019 Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. It was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Michael Deon Prize. She is editor of The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers (named for a line from Maeve Brennan, which includes a story by Brennan), The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland and The Art of Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories. Sinéad also collaborates with artist and musicians, with commissions from The Wellcome Collection, BBC, Frieze and various galleries. In 2022, with Kim Gordon, she co-edited This Woman’s Work: Essays in Music, published by White Rabbit Books. Hagstone is her first novel and it is published by 4th Estate in April 2024.Cathy Sweeney lives in Dublin. She studied at Trinity College and taught English at secondary level for many years before turning to writing. Her work has been published in various magazines and journals. Her collection of short stories Modern Times was published by The Stinging Fly in 2020 and her debut novel Breakdown was published by W&N in January 2024.Mark your calendars and join us in West Cork from 11-18 July 2025. Our 2025 line-up will be released in late March/early April and you can sign up for our newsletter to hear about it first.Support West Cork Literary Festival Become a Friend of West Cork Literary Festival to enjoy priority booking for our highly sought-after festival tickets. In particular, you will be supporting our free events for children and our outreach programmes to allow the festival to be accessible to everyone. Visit our festival bookshop Bantry BookshopFollow us on BlueSky SocialInstagramTwitter/XFacebookSubscribe to our YouTube channel Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.