Friday 26 July | 2.45pm | £10 

Fiction

Aimée Walsh and Orla Mackey in conversation with Jan Carson.

A unique opportunity to hear two new voices, and hidden gems of the JHISS festival, discuss their debut books with the award-winning Belfast writer Jan Carson.

Aimée Walsh is a writer from Belfast. Her short stories have been longlisted for the London Magazine Short Story Prize and published in Extra Teeth. Her non-fiction and book criticism has appeared in The Irish Times, The Observer, RTÉ Culture, Dazed, Refinery29, and The Independent. Exile, her debut novel, is alive with the vernacular of young Northern Ireland and rich with late 2000s detail. It is an unforgettable debut about consent, class, friendship and the meaning of home.aimeewalsh.com/

“An assured, unsentimental portrayal of youth … A compelling debut.” EM Reapy

Orla Mackey, an exciting new talent in Irish literary fiction, is a writer and teacher based in Kilkenny. Mouthing, her debut novel, is an acerbic, unsentimental love letter to rural Ireland. Like the novels of Elizabeth Strout, her writing is overflowing with empathy and heart. Mouthing traces the misadventures of one small Irish community from the mid-20^th century to the early 21^st in a series of highly confessional, darkly humorous and sharply observed monologues.

“Full of disgrace, inherited trauma and family secrets, (“Mouthing”) will make you laugh, because if you didn’t you’d surely cry.” Angela Flannery.

Jan Carson is the author of the best-selling novels, The Fire Starters (2020) and The Raptures (2023), and the recently published short story collection, Quickly, While They Still Have Horses (Penguin, 2024).jancarson.co.uk/