RadioMoLI

For centuries, romance fiction by Irish writers from Lady Morgan to Marian Keyes has told the story of characters in love. Yet romance remains a target for public condemnation and critical contempt, in part because these popular novels have been written largely by and for women. In summer 2025, the Museum of Literature Ireland launched the exhibition Happy Ever After: Falling in Love with Irish Ro...

MoLI’s award-winning learning programme reaches thousands of young people and adults every year, through onsite tours and workshops, online workshops to schools across the island, volunteer and work experience programmes, and through targeted work with communities.  In this conversation, we take a look under the hood of the museum’s learning department to find out more about the intention and real...

For centuries, romance fiction by Irish writers from Lady Morgan to Marian Keyes has told the story of characters in love. Yet romance remains a target for public condemnation and critical contempt, in part because these popular novels have been written largely by and for women. In summer 2025, the Museum of Literature Ireland launched the exhibition Happy Ever After: Falling in Love with Irish Ro...

The 2025 Dedalus Lecture, an annual lecture held at MoLI on Bloomsday, 16 June, was delivered by the novelist, essayist and critic Naoise Dolan. In her lecture, titled ‘The Exophonic Ulysses’, Dolan will wove insights about multilingualism with an understanding of Joyce as a linguist – his love of Italian, French and Latin, and his more fraught relationship with Irish, before offering a broader re...

Running at MoLI across the weekend of 7-9 June 2024, HOMESWEETHOME was a multidisciplinary festival circling the theme of home.  Taking place across the museum’s exhibitions and historic house, and with programmes designed for all ages, the festival will explore new perspectives on the central question of ‘What is home?’ through talks, discussion, performances, music, workshops, food, and more. In...

The Museum of Literature Ireland celebrated the relaunch RadioMoLI with a special event held at the museum on 25 September 2025. A vast and ever-growing digital archive for Irish literature, RadioMoLI features hundreds of audio recordings, video and images, all of which are free and accessible. First launched in February 2019 – several months before the museum opened its doors for the first time –...

Books and their Makers is a new podcast series on RadioMoLI exploring the stories behind the books we read. Featuring conversations with authors, editors, publishers, agents, and translators, and highlighting the many crucial behind-the-scenes activities and workers involved in bringing writing to publication.  The series is presented by Dr Tim Groenland, School of English, Drama and Film, UCD, an...

The 2024 MoLI Christmas Ghost Story is a live recording from the launch of MoLI Edition’s new publication, A Visit from the Banshee , edited by Katie Mishler, and produced by the Museum of Literature Ireland in collaboration with the UCD Centre for Cultural Analytics. Across the half-hour recording, you will hear extracts from three stories featured in the book, alongside live music and sound desi...

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. This edition of Writer Presents, ‘Dublin We Were’, was written and is read by David Hayden. David Hayden was born in Ireland and lives in England. His writing has appeared in A Public Space , Zoetrope All-Story , The Dublin Review , AGNI, New Yor...

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the final episode within this three-part edition of Writer Presents, author Jan Carson speaks with poet and editor Sarah Hesketh, discussing the specificities of writing about dementia. They explore the process of finding balance between creat...

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In this continuation of a three-part edition of Writer Presents , author Jan Carson speaks with theatre maker and playwright Caoileann Curry-Thompson, discussing their own familial experiences with dementia and the effect the illness has had on t...

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the first episode of a three-part edition of Writer Presents , author Jan Carson speaks with Dr Jane Lugea of Queen’s University Belfast, exploring the complexities of writing from the perspective of a person with dementia, and how the use of...

MoLI, in collaboration with the UCD Centre for Cultural Analytics, presents its fourth annual Christmas Ghost Story: ‘Number Ninety’ (1895) by Bithia May Croker, performed by Ned Dennehy. For years, agents have attempted to secure a lease for Number Ninety, a desirable family mansion, at almost no cost. Long rumoured to be haunted, it has never found a long-term tenant. Sceptic John Hollyoak sets...

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the fourth episode of Writer Presents, writer, journalist and photographer Sally Hayden speaks to Gulwali Passarlay, Suad Aldarra, Helon Habila, Jane Grogan and Seán Columb about the role of storytelling in shaping our understanding of migrati...

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the third episode of Writer Presents , writer and zine creator Sarah Maria Griffin looks at the importance of zines to her throughout her life and guides the listener through creating a zine of their own. Sarah Maria Griffin is from Dublin. Sh...

The Folklore Society of Ireland Annual Lecture 2023 This bi-lingual lecture, co-hosted by MoLI and An Cumann Le Béaloideas Éireann / The Folklore of Ireland Society, focused on St Brigid’s Day Traditions on Inis Meáin. The lecture was given by journalist and broadcaster Aedín Ní Thiarnaigh who has carried out extensive fieldwork and research on Inis Meáin on the celebration of St Brigid’s Day. Ní...

To celebrate the unveiling of a George Moore bust at the museum, we were joined for an afternoon of panel discussions and presentations exploring the varied and multicoloured life of this most singular Irish writer through music, architecture, visual art and conversation. Guest speakers included Katherine McSharry (Acting Director, National Library of Ireland), Robert O’Byrne (writer and historian...

MoLI presents the third annual MoLI Christmas Ghost Story: ‘Hertford O’Donnell’s Warning’ (1867) by Charlotte Riddell, performed by Kathy Rose O’Brien, in an edited and abridged form. Surgeon Hertford O’Donnell is a rising star at Guy’s Hospital, London, known for his steady hand and unshakeable bravery. In his personal life, however, the eccentric and lonely Irishman has a less than sterling repu...

In the fifth episode of Past/Present/Pride, Dr Paul D’Alton speaks to writer and poet Seán Hewitt, on the eve of the publication of his new memoir, All Down Darkness Wide . Seán Hewitt was born in 1990. His debut collection, Tongues of Fire , is published by Jonathan Cape. He is a book critic for The Irish Times and teaches Modern British & Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin. His debut...

Every Life is Many Days is a podcast about James Joyce and his family in the contemporary novel. Presented by Professor Anne Fogarty of the School of English, Drama and Film at UCD and Director of the UCD James Joyce Research Centre, the podcast looks at how the many gaps between Joyce the man and Joyce the writer have in recent years been movingly explored in a number of novels that think about h...

Every Life is Many Days is a podcast about James Joyce and his family in the contemporary novel. Presented by Professor Anne Fogarty of the School of English, Drama and Film at UCD and Director of the UCD James Joyce Research Centre, the podcast looks at how the many gaps between Joyce the man and Joyce the writer have in recent years been movingly explored in a number of novels that think about h...

MoLI continues its annual Christmas Ghost Story tradition with Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘The Demon Lover’ (1945), performed in its entirety by Derbhle Crotty. Mrs Kathleen Drover returns to her dusty, abandoned Kensington home to gather some of her family’s forgotten belongings. Set in London during World War II, the city is eerily vacant, as families like her own have been evacuated to the countryside t...

A new anthology from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Arlen House, All Strangers Here explores the interrelationships between diplomacy, creativity, and language across poetry and prose published by Irish diplomats and their families over the past century. Part of a wider programme marking the centenary of the Irish Foreign Service, it features many remarkable writers, amongst them: Eavan Bol...

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the second episode of Writer Presents , the poet, playwright and novelist Dermot Bolger looks at the life and enduring legacy of Herbert Simms (1898-1948) – the architect responsible for much of Dublin’s early twentieth-century social housing,...

Do you enjoy reading ghost stories alone at night? Have you ever binged an entire true crime series? Or do you unwind watching horror films like The Exorcist , or reading the supernatural novels of Stephen King? The Dublin Gothic Podcast is a series looking at the intersection between art, psychology, folklore, architecture, natural history and Ireland’s urban gothic writing. Vampires, ghosts, and...