Edel Coffey
Edel has always wanted to write fiction. “I got into journalism as a pragmatic response to a romantic dream of being a writer,” she says. After doing placements at The Tribune during her degree, she […]
Nita Prose
Nita remembers the moment, at 3 ½, that she realised she could read, and the world of stories opened up. “I was always good with words,” she says, “and hopeless at almost everything else.” […]
Claire Lynch
Claire’s family were great users of the library. “I always wanted to be a writer, but in the way people who love to read want to – as an abstract fantasy. I wasn’t chasing it.” […]
Niall Bourke
Niall came from a house full of books. But at college he became fascinated by the whole area of economics. After college he spent a year in Australia doing any job he could find. “I put […]
Ian Mark.
When Ian was 5 years old, and living in Derbyshire, he wrote a story, and his English teacher was so impressed that she bound it and made a cover. “That’s when I decided I wanted to […]
Declan O’Rourke
From an intensely musical family, Declan took up the guitar at 13, and hasn’t put it down since. “I started writing songs at 15, when a singer we auditioned for our band said, ‘Let’s play […]
Beginner’s Pluck. Lara Cullen.
As a child Lara wanted to be a psychologist or a TV presenter, but after university she gained a graduate position in HR with Corrs Brewers. “It gave me an amazing foundation.” After five years she […]
Freddie Alexander
Freddie Alexander is not a typical children’s writer. The 35-year-old Dublin based solicitor was not a bookish child; he rarely reads these days – saying he simply doesn’t have the time, and there are no appropriately […]
Maeve Murphy
A precocious young reader, Maeve became involved in the Cambridge Footlights at University, acting and writing sketches. Graduating, she moved to Camden Town, London, and co-founded the theatre company, Trouble and Strife. “Later, living in […]
J.R Thorpe.
Brought up surrounded by books, at six, Jennifer wrote a take-off of the famous Five, with a time travel element – taking them to the Jurassic period. When she was studying creative writing in Oxford, Toby […]
Caitriona Lally
It’s a warm September day when I meet Caitriona Lally in the garden of MOLI – the Museum of Literature, Ireland. It’s my first interviewing trip to Dublin since the pandemic hit. Caitriona arrives fresh from […]
Robert L Harris
Robert’s American parents moved around a lot when he was a child. And he hasn’t lived in America since going to Edinburgh in the late 1970’s to take a postgraduate degree. His wife is from Kerry […]