A podcast focussing on fiction and poetry hosted by poets and writers Peter Sirr and Enda Wyley. Also features the Toaster Challenge where guest writers are given the time it takes to make toast to talk about a book that has resonated with them.
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Send us Fan Mail Most poets write under their given names – Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, Denise Riley, Elizabeth Bishop. Some on the other hand use pseudonyms; there is no such person as Biddy Jenkinson, except in her poems; Pablo Neruda was born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in order not to offend his family. And of course there is Fernando Pessoa who wrote under a series of heteronymns –…
Send us Fan Mail This year marks the 45th anniversary of Salmon Poetry now based in The Salmon Bookshop and Literary Centre, in Ennistymon, County Clare. We invited poet and critic Ciarán O’Rourke , whose own new collection, Prophetstown , is published by Irish Pages in August, to review four new poetry books from Salmon Poetry . And we talk to US poet Tess Barry, a native of Western Pennsylvania…
Send us Fan Mail Epistolary novels used to be all the rage Think Clarissa , think Dracula , think the more recent We need to talk about Kevin . Last year saw another smash hit epistolary novel, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans , published to wide acclaim and stellar sales, and shortlisted for the 2026 Women’s Fiction prize . Three times a week, 73-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp sits down at her…
Send us Fan Mail On today's show we travel down the road to Carlow University Pittsburgh's MFA in Creative Writing Program during its annual June residency at Trinity College, Dublin where we have been invited to interview novelist Caitriona Lally about her latest book, the memoir Home Economics. So grab that flat white, latte, tea and rasher sandwich and have a listen to Caitriona's fascinating…
Send us Fan Mail On today's episode we visit 11 Parnell Square in Dublin for the launch of Poetry Ireland/Éigse Éireann's restored headquarters. We hear about the new performance spaces, education resources and Seamus Heaney Library and talk to director Claire Power about her vision for the building and the organisation. We also talk to Poet in Residence Sean Borodale about his poetry and his…
Send us Fan Mail On today’s show we talk to Joseph Woods , director of the Strokestown Poetry Festival about what this year's programme will offer poetry lovers this May Bank Holiday weekend in Strokestown House. Ands we welcome back to the breakfast table poet and Irish Times reviewer Adam Wyeth to talk with us about recent poetry publications that have grabbed his attention. Adam is himself an…
Send us Fan Mail This morning we talk to Mary Costello about her new novel A Beautiful Loan . My name is Anna, and for some time now, I have been trying to account for certain events in my life – my adult life, that is – which, from this vantage point of forty-five years, I often find baffling … In 1985 Dublin, nineteen-year-old Anna Hughes is in thrall to Peter Gallagher, an older, worldly man.…
Send us Fan Mail In this episode we go to one of our favourite places in Dublin, Hodges Figgis bookshop in Dawson Street, to interview Cathy Galvin on the occasion of the launch of her collection of poems from Bloodaxe, Ethnology, A Love Song for Connemara . We also meet and hear poet John F. Deane , who spoke about Cathy’s book and read some of his own recently published Carcanet collection,…
Send us Fan Mail We’re back for the first episode of 2026. This week we’re back in Books Upstairs in Dublin to interview Hugo Hamilton about his latest novel, Conversation with the Sea. Fleeing his failed marriage in Berlin, Lukas Dorn revisits the West of Ireland, the place of his honeymoon two decades earlier. While his former wife is being cancelled at work and his daughter is arrested at a…
Send us Fan Mail Mince pie and Christmas cracker laden, today’s breakfast table is very festive indeed as we celebrate the best of books and cultural events in 2025. To help us celebrate we’ve gathered at our table four writers who have each been asked to choose just one book, either fiction or non fiction that they’ve especially admired this year and one cultural event – film, exhibition, music…