The Arts Council Podcast

The September Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Wendy Erskine about her short story collection 'Dance Move'. “The Guardian writes of Wendy Erskine’s collection of stories: ‘She identifies what is most fruitful about her characters’ predicaments – the emotional core, the most resonant ironies – and traces with rapt and infectious at...

The August Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Kevin Power about his novel ‘White City’ “Ben, the protagonist of White City, is, John Self writes in the Guardian, the ‘son of a disgraced Dublin banker, languishing in rehab and writing an account of his wrong turns as therapy.’ As Ben gets involved in a dodgy property deal in Serbia,...

The July Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Nicole Flattery about her short story collection ‘Nothing Special’ “Nothing Special is set at a very particular New York moment. It is 1966. Mae, the protagonist, lands a job as typist for the artist Andy Warhol who is embarking on an unconventional novel by taping the conversations of his...

The April Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer John Banville about his novel ‘The Singularities’ “In this brilliant and dreamy novel, John Banville gives life to the many characters who have peopled his fiction over fifty years. He allows them to meet each other, revisit old scenes not as ghosts or as revenants but as fictional protag...

The June Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Luke Cassidy about his novel ‘Iron Annie. “Iron Annie is written with astonishing energy and verve. It is set in the criminal underworld of Dundalk, but more important, it is written in a tone that is intriguing and unforgettable. It uses a living and contemporary language distilled by Cas...

The May Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Emma Donoghue about her novel ‘Haven’ “Haven, Emma Donoghue’s fourteenth novel, is set on Skellig Michael in the year 600 when three Irishmen decide to establish a monastery on this extraordinary piece of bare rock. The Chicago Review of Books has written: ‘In classic Donoghue narrative sty...

The March Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Philip Ó Ceallaigh about his book 'Trouble'. “Philip Ó Ceallaigh is a brilliant, uncompromising and ambitious writer who has long been resident in Bucharest. Of his collection of stories ‘Trouble’, the Los Angeles Review of Books wrote: ‘Ó Ceallaigh writes with such immediacy, such confes...

The February Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Louise Kennedy about her book 'Trespasses'. The unforgettable protagonist of Louise Kennedy’s ‘Trespasses’ is 24-year-old Cushla Lavery, a Catholic schoolteacher living in 1975 in a small town outside Belfast. The novel narrates the story of her love affair with an older, married, Prot...

The January Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Eimear McBride about her novel 'A Girl is a Half-formed Thing'. “Eimear McBride’s groundbreaking first novel uses a style that matches the conscious mind’s darting processes. It tells the story of a young woman in an Irish town in a time when the open religiosity is in conflict with cha...

The December Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Bernard MacLaverty about his short story collection 'Blank Pages and Other Stories'. “MacLaverty offers a masterclass in how to create character, how to build scenes by accretion of detail, how to work with implication and suggestion, how to write indirectly and manages to create more...

Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín delivered his first annual lecture on 6th November 2022 in Town Hall Theatre Galway. For those unable to join us at the event, we are delighted to be able to share a recording of this extraordinary evening.

The November Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Tom McCarthy about Elizabeth Bowen’s novel 'The Last September' The Laureate says “This is another novel set during the Irish War of Independence. Just as Martina Devlin’s book is about solitude and introspection, this centres on a house party, scenes filled with chatter and strange si...

Warning: This episode contains mild swearing. The Curiosity Series is an Arts Council podcast commissioned as part of the Council’s 70th anniversary celebrations hosted by writer, comedian and podcaster Maeve Higgins. In each episode, you’ll hear artists involved in music, dance, poetry, literature, visual arts and theatre in conversation with Maeve as they get curious about each other’s work, exp...

The October Art of Reading book club features Colm in conversation with writer Martina Devlin about her book Edith. The Laureate says “Edith is an engrossing and sensitive portrait of the writer Edith Somerville during the War of Independence when her writing partner Violet Ross is dead and her own career as a writer not flourishing. It is a portrait of a sensitive, solitary figure in a time of tu...

The Curiosity Series is an Arts Council podcast commissioned as part of the Council’s 70th anniversary celebrations hosted by writer, comedian and podcaster Maeve Higgins. In each episode, you’ll hear artists involved in music, dance, poetry, literature, visual arts and theatre in conversation with Maeve as they get curious about each other’s work, explore the integral role that creativity has pla...

The Curiosity Series is an Arts Council podcast commissioned as part of the Council’s 70th anniversary celebrations hosted by writer, comedian and podcaster Maeve Higgins. In each episode, you’ll hear artists involved in music, dance, poetry, literature, visual arts and theatre in conversation with Maeve as they get curious about each other’s work, explore the integral role that creativity has pla...

The September Art of Reading book club features Colm in conversation with writer Una Mannion about The Ante-Room by Kate O'Brien. The Laureate says “This novel is written with great intensity, being set over a time period of three days in which the focus is on the entire life of a single family, all the secrets and treacheries coming into the open. Time and character are dealt with in this book wi...

The Curiosity Series is an Arts Council podcast commissioned as part of the Council’s 70th anniversary celebrations hosted by writer, comedian and podcaster Maeve Higgins. In each episode, you’ll hear artists involved in music, dance, poetry, literature, visual arts and theatre in conversation with Maeve as they get curious about each other’s work, explore the integral role that creativity has pla...

The Curiosity Series is an Arts Council podcast commissioned as part of the Council’s 70th anniversary celebrations hosted by writer, comedian and podcaster Maeve Higgins. In each episode, you’ll hear artists involved in music, dance, poetry, literature, visual arts and theatre in conversation with Maeve as they get curious about each other’s work, explore the integral role that creativity has pla...

The August Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with Professor Frank Shovlin about The Barracks by John McGahern. “This bleak, unrelenting novel portrays a woman in the Irish midlands who has married a policeman and become a surrogate mother to his children in the time after his first wife’s death. Elizabeth, too, is facing her own death. Her cha...

The Curiosity Series is an Arts Council podcast commissioned as part of the Council’s 70th anniversary celebrations hosted by writer, comedian and podcaster Maeve Higgins. In each episode, you’ll hear artists involved in music, dance, poetry, literature, visual arts and theatre in conversation with Maeve as they get curious about each other’s work, explore the integral role that creativity has pla...

The July Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Naoise Dolan about her novel Exciting Times. “This novel is a tour-de-force work about exile and the world of expats in Hong Kong. Seeking accommodation, looking for love, teaching English as a foreign language, dealing with foreigners, being Irish, calling home, are all dramatized with wi...

The June Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Sinéad Gleeson and writer and granddaughter of Mary Lavin, Alice Ryan, to discuss Lavin's short story, In the Middle of the Fields, from the collection of the same name. Read more about the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme here: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Lau...

The May Art of Reading book club features Colm in conversation with Colin Barrett on his short story collection 'Homesickness'

This is an ingeniously told story, narrated by an actual book, a novel by the Austrian writer Joseph Roth, offering an account of its picaresque travels to America and back to Europe, while in the background we learn of the life of Joseph Roth himself and the dark times he lived in.” Colm Tóibín, Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024