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Send us a text Mince pie and Christmas cracker laden, today’s breakfast table is very festive indeed as we celebrate the best of books and cultural events in 2025. To help us celebrate we’ve gathered at our table four writers who have each been asked to choose just one book, either fiction or non fiction that they’ve especially admired this year and one cultural event –  film, exhibition, music or anything else –  that they have enjoyed over the last twelve months. The four writers are Sarah Gilmartin, Neil Hegarty, Caitriona Lally and Philip Davison. Books recommended: Anne Enright: Attention: Writing on Life, Art and the World Gerbrand Bakker: The Hairdresser’s Son; Ben Macintyre: The Spy and the Traitor ; Sarah Moss: Ghost Wall; Helen Garner: Collected Diaries 1978-1998: How to end a story and Tim MacGabhann: The Black Pool: A Memoir of Forgetting. This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text This morning we welcome poet and critic Ciarán O’Rourke to our breakfast table here in Dublin 8. Ciarán has published two collections of poems with Irish Pages Press, The Buried Breath in 2018  and Phantom Gang in 2022, and he also runs the poetry website ragpickerpoetry.net. Ciarán talk about five recent books of poetry: Eiléan Ní Cuilleanáin, New Selected Poems; Catherine Ann Cullen, Storm Damages; Keith Payne, Savage Acres; Patrick Cotter, Quality Control at the Miracle Factory; Kevin Graham, Time's Guest. Mark Granier is an award-winning Irish poet and photographer whose work has been widely published and admired for its sharp imagery, lyric precision, and subtle wit. Over the past two decades, he has brought out several acclaimed collections, including Airborne, Haunt, Fade Street,  as well as Ghostlight, New and Selected Poems. His latest book, Everything You Always Wanted To Know, is perhaps his most personal and revealing to date, weaving together memory, intimacy, and the everyday with a striking visual clarity.  This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text On today’s episode we travel to IMMA and the Dublin Book Festival to meet and talk with İlhan Sami Çomak, a Kurdish Turkish poet who has spent almost  thirty years imprisoned in Turkey. He was arrested in 1994 and charged with membership of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Part. In jail, Çomak released eight books of poetry and became one of Turkey's longest serving political prisoners. He is here in Dublin to mark the Day of the imprisoned Writer at the invitation of Irish PEN which followed an extensive international campaign for his release. Ilhan is accompanied by his interpreter Ipak Özel. Also in this episode writer, filmmaker and  lecturer  Ferdia MacAnna joins us the breakfast table to talk to us about  Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuinn, the widely acclaimed collection of short stories published by the Stinging Fly Press, and now by Granta as well.  This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text On this morning's episode we talk to Ger Reidy about his latest poetry collection, Clay;  Liam Carson tells us about the latest edition of IMRAM, the Irish language festival and the increasing visibility of Irish, and I chat to Enda Wyley about her book, Sudden Light and about winning the Lawrence O' Shaughnessy Award for poetry. This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text On today’s episode poet and critic Adam Wyeth reviews nine new poetry collections. Under the microscope are Infinity Pool by Vona Groarke; Belfast Twilight by Liam Carson; Harbour Doubts by Bebe Ahley; Over Here by Alan Gillis; Chic to be Sad by Molly Twomey; New Arcana by Jesica Traynor; The Convent of Mercy by Tom French; À la Belle Étoile: The odyssey of Jeanne by Afric McGlinchey and Scaffold by Thomas Brezing. A strong poet of coffee needed! This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text In this episode we invite Colm Tóibín to the breakfast table to discuss his new book A Ship in Full Sail: The Laureate Lectures and Other Writings. The book collects the blogs he wrote during his term as Laureate for Irish Fiction,  one written each month on topics as diverse as  Artificial Intelligence, reading Ulysses, the discomfort of Salman Rushdie in the wilds of County Dublin, Bob Dylan in concert, a life of Thom Gunn and the author’s role in a campaign to save the House of The Dead. Also included are essays on abiding interests –  music and the visual arts. It's a wide-ranging collection full of fascinating insights into the mind of one of Ireland’s beloved writers. This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text On this morning's show novelist Henrietta McKervey talks to us about four recent novels: Fair Play by Louise Hegarty, Air by John Boyne, Murder takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman and Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.  And she also does a surprising Toaster Challenge. Listen to see what she chooses ... Henrietta McKervey is the author of the acclaimed novels What Becomes of Us, The Heart of Everything, Violet Hill and A Talented Man. She has a Hennessy First Fiction Award and won the inaugural UCD Maeve Binchy Travel Award. She has programmed the ECHOES festival and International Literature Festival Dublin, and contributes to the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Independent and the Brendan O'Connor show on RTÉ Radio 1. This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text This episode sees us visiting Dublin's historic United Arts Club where Enda interviews Mary O'Donnell about her latest collection of short stories, Walking Ghosts.  Praise for Walking Ghosts 'Each story shines in its own distinctive light.' —Neil Hegarty 'O'Donnell is unflinching in her ability to display humanity in all its flaws and vulnerabilities.' —Mary Costello 'The magic of her writing is in the subtle, mysterious evocation of the unconscious, of the potent mixture of mood and thought and half thought which colours human lives.' —Eilis Ni Dhuibhne 'Searingly intimate and subtle stories, the beauty, the pain and the hope of desperate lives lived in everyday places. A fascinating, varied and utterly compelling collection.' —William Wall This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text On this episode we drop in to the Carlow University Pittsburgh MFA summer programme in Trinity College, Dublin to interview Sarah Moss about her latest novel, Ripeness.  'Tender and rueful . . . Sarah Moss is a marvel of insight and eloquence' - Emma Donoghue 'One of our greatest living writers' - Katherine May, author of Wintering More Praise for Sarah Moss: 'Throws much contemporary writing into the shade' - Hilary Mantel ‘One of our very best contemporary novelists’ - Independent 'A brilliant mind' - The Guardian 'Moss has quietly been putting out some of the most interesting and carefully sculpted novels of recent years' - Financial Times 'One of the finest contemporary writers working in Britain today' - Stylist Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text On this episode we talk about this year's International Literature Festival Dublin which runs from 16-25 May, and where Enda will be interviewing novelists Gethan Dick and Patrick Holloway. We also talk to Karin-Lin Greenberg about Your Are Here, her novel set in a dying mall in upstate New York. "Lin-Greenberg’s web of characters illustrate the complex lives of ordinary people." —Laura Zornosa, Time "Like Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, the charm of Lin-Greenberg’s engaging story lies in the sweetness of the characters’ everyday lives." —Becky Meloan, The Washington Post "Charming . . . The small lies woven into a lifelong marriage, the petty resentments harbored by polite neighbors and, above all, the comic discrepancy between a character’s outer and inner life—all emerge unforced and unadorned in this multifaceted narrative . . . But the everyday reality that Ms. Lin-Greenberg so memorably creates is not easily eclipsed. Compassion and wry understatement remain her strengths, and in You Are Here she captures not only the frayed texture of suburban existence but also the turbulent emotions, immediate and long buried, of protagonists who are ultimately far more than stereotypes." —Anna Mundow, The Wall Street Journal "Beautifully written and radically sympathetic . . . Among its achievements, You Are Here is a breathtaking depiction of a community—even one at the mall." —Jeffrey Condran, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Absolutely irresistible." —People Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text In this episode, on Poetry Day, we cross the Atlantic and. breakfast in Miami, where we talk to Cuban American poet Richard Blanco about his Homeland of my Body: New and Selected Poems, a rich, accomplished, intensely intimate collection with two full sections of new poems bookending Blanco’s selections from his five previous volumes. We also feature this year’s Strokestown International Poetry Festival, including the five poets shortlisted for the Strokestown Poetry Competition.  If you’re around for the festival Enda will be giving  a poetry workshop and Peter will be giving a talk on The Life of the Poet. Praise for Richard Blanco: “An engineer, poet, Cuban American… his poetry bridges cultures and languages – a mosaic of our past, our present, and our future – reflecting a nation that is hectic, colorful, and still becoming.” – President Joe Biden, conferring the National Humanities Medal on Richard Blanco Sandra Cisneros describes Blanco’s poems as “sad, tender, and filled with longing. Like an old photograph, a saint’s statue worn away by the devout, a bolero on the radio on a night full of rain. Me emocionan. There is no other way to say it. They emotion me.” This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text On this episode we talk to poet novelist and critic Mary O’Donnell about Mary O’Malley’s The Shark Nursery, Patrick Holloway’s The Language of Remembering,  ! All’ ARME /? by Eilish Martin and Beginnings Over and Over: Four New Poets from Ireland, edited by Leeanne Quinn. We also give a shout out to a special anthology for One Dublin One Book, Dublin, Written in our Hearts, published by the Stinging Fly Press and edited by Declan Meade. It’s an anthology that offers writings about Dublin in the first quarter of this century and contributors include Kevin Barry, Caitriona Lally, Felizspeaks, Stephen James Smith, Anne Enright, Estelle Birdy, Paula Meehan and our own Peter Sirr. There are lots of events happening throughout the city to coincide with this anthology and you can find out more by checking out onedublinonebook.ie Mary O’Donnell’s book of short stories, Walking Ghosts, comes out this May from Mercier Press. ‘Each story shines in its own distinctive light,’ Neil Hegarty says. It will be launched in the Maynooth Bookshop on the 7th of May, and in Hodges Figgis, Dublin on the 20th of May.   This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text Finding inspiration in the local and near at had, attentive to climate concern and global unrest, to home and homeless, belonging and welcome, concern and global and welcome – on today’s episode we talk to poet and publisher Pat Boran about his eight collection Hedge School.  'A writer of great tenderness and lyricism' – Agenda, UK '... local and international, full of wisdom and wry humour ...' – Irish Literary Supplement, USA This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Support the show

Send us a text ‘A beautiful tapestry of late middle age reckoning’ – today we interview the writer Mary Morrissy about her new collection of short stories, Twenty-Twenty Vision, published by Lilliput Press. For her Toaster Challenge, Mary chooses The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazard. Get the coffee on! This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Mary Morrissy is an award-winning Irish novelist (The Hennessy Award, Lannan Foundation Award) and short story writer, the author of four novels, Mother of Pearl, The Pretender, The Rising of Bella Casey and Penelope Unbound, as well as two collections of short stories, A Lazy Eye and Prosperity Drive. She has 20 years’ experience of teaching creative writing at university level in the US and Ireland. Until May 2020, she was the associate director of creative writing at University College Cork.  Support the show

Send us a text Was 1950s Dublin really a place of murder and intrigue? On today’s show we travel to the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation  in Dublin’s Fenian Street to talk to novelist John Banville about his latest novel, The Drowned, the fourth in a series featuring Detective Inspector St John Strafford and the pathologist Quirke familiar to many from the Benjamin Black novels. And we talk to Estonian poet Doris Kareva who visited the Centre recently about her own poetry, translation, and Estonia. Brew up a big pot of coffee and join us for a lively show! This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr. Reviews of The Drowned 'Cold, compelling and seamlessly plotted, The Drowned also offers a fine portrait of that familiar and never likeable figure in Banville's fictions: the supercilious villain who has lost his moral compass.' ― Financial Times 'A beautifully written and intriguing slowburn of a book, in which the various quandaries in the main characters' private lives are as absorbing as the central mystery'. ― Guardian 'Brilliant . . . You need not have read the earlier novels to follow this one, but it will be a better read if you do . . . while various loose ends are left tantalisingly in the air, making it clear that a sequel will follow. It can't come too soon for this devoted fan. '― Irish Examiner 'Richly atmospheric . . . It's a Dublin where you can smell the pubs, feel the drizzle, and taste the Bewley's coffee. [...]At the centre of it all is the strained relationship between Quirke and Strafford, a couple at odds who are right up there with Banville's greatest achievements.' ― Irish Independent 'Tight-lipped humour thrums through the latest in the Booker winner's Strafford and Quirke crime series . . . The Drowned stands alone, too, suspenseful on its own terms . . . while it's ultimately evil, not good, that gives The Drowned its crackling denouement, the novel takes care to part on a more cheerful note - even if the logic of the series demands that Quirke can hardly be content for too long.' ― Observer The Drowned delivers an ultimately satisfying and immersive mystery in beautifully wrought prose. ― Irish Independent Books in Brief Bravo! ― The Times Doris Kareva is one of Estonia’s leading poets. She was born in Tallinn in 1958, daughter of the composer Hillar Kareva, and published her first poems at the age of 14. In 1977 she entered the University of Tartu as an already acknowledged young poet. Due to her dissident connections she was expelled but graduated as a distance student in Romance and Germanic philology. She has worked for the cultural weekly Sirp (Sickle) and as the Secretary-General of the Estonian National Commission for UNESCO from 1992 to 2008, and is currently an editor for the literary journal Looming (Creation). Support the show