Fiction

David Park in Conversation with Hugh Odling-Smee

Monday 28 July 2025 | 1.30pm | £12

David Park is one of Ireland’s most important writers, admired and acclaimed for his compelling storytelling and for his finely crafted prose.  He is the prizewinning author of ten novels, a novella and two collections of short stories. His first novel The Healing (1992) won the Authors’ Club First Novel Award. The Truth Commissioner (2008) was awarded the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize and adapted for film; The Light of Amsterdam (2012) was shortlisted for the IMPAC Prize. Travelling in a Strange Land won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2018 and he has been shortlisted four times for the Irish Novel of the year. Spies in Canaan (2022) was a masterful exploration of how guilt and memory can resurface in old age and his next novel, Ghost Wedding, a masterful portrait of love and portrayal, will be published this June.

‘David Park is one of Ireland’s greatest novelists.‘ Roddy Doyle

Hugh Odling-Smee is a cultural commentator and arts manager who has interviewed many local and visiting writers at events and festivals throughout Northern Ireland.