Fiction

Dazzling Debuts: Garrett Carr and Roisín O’Donnell In Conversation with Jan Carson

Friday 1 August | 2.45pm | £12

Garrett Carr was born and brought up in the harbour town of Killybegs, Co Donegal. He now lives in Belfast and teaches Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast. He is a frequent contributor to The Guardian and The Irish Times. His non-fiction book, The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland’s Border, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and described by Colm Toibín as “great writing about landscape and history”. The Boy from the Sea is his debut novel.

“Compulsive reading … Compassionate, lyrical and full of devilment” Louise Kennedy

Roisín O’Donnell won the prize for Short Story of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards in 2018, and was shortlisted for the same prize in 2022. She is the author of the story collection Wild Quiet, which was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and shortlisted for the Kate O’Brien Award. Her short fiction has been selected for major anthologies such as The Long Gaze Back. Nesting, her first novel, has been longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

‘Here is a novelist who has powerful news to tell, and an impressive range of narrative gifts with which to tell it’ Irish Times.

Jan Carson is the author of the best-selling novels The Fire Starters (2020) and The Raptures (2023) and the short story collection, Quickly, While They Still Have Horses (2024)