West Cork Literary Festival

Listen back to an unforgettable evening of stories, laughter and outspoken opinions with Miriam Margolyes. This podcast was recorded at West Cork Literary Festival on 15 July 2024 and Miriam was in conversation with Lynn Ruane.‘My new book is called OH MIRIAM! – something that has been said to me a lot over the years, often in tones of strong disapproval. It contains lots more revelations and stories and discoveries and I can't wait to share it with you all!’ Miriam Margolyes----------------------------------------------------------------------------Born in Oxford, England in 1941 & educated at Newham College, Cambridge, Miriam Margolyes is an award-winning veteran of the stage and screen, and an internationally acclaimed voice-artist. Winner of the BAFTA Best Supporting Actress award for The Age of Innocence, she received an OBE in 2002 for Services to Drama. Her latest book Oh Miriam!: Stories from an Extraordinary Life was published by John Murray Press in September 2023.Mark your calendars and join us in West Cork from 11-18 July 2025. Our 2025 line-up will be released in late March/early April and you can sign up for our newsletter to hear about it first.Support West Cork Literary Festival Become a Friend of West Cork Literary Festival to enjoy priority booking for our highly sought-after festival tickets. In particular, you will be supporting our free events for children and our outreach programmes to allow the festival to be accessible to everyone. Visit our festival bookshop Bantry BookshopFollow us on BlueSky SocialInstagramTwitter/XFacebookSubscribe to our YouTube channel

The novels of Hisham Matar and Priscilla Morris speak to us now more than ever. ‘My Friends’, the new novel by Booker-shortlisted, Pulitzer prize-winning author Hisham Matar, is a masterful, intensely moving novel about three friends living in political exile and the emotional homeland that deep friendships can provide from the of ‘The Return’. Priscilla Morris’ Women’s Prize-shortlisted novel ‘Black Butterflies’ is set in Sarajevo in the spring of 1992, where each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves and each morning, the residents — whether Muslim, Croat or Serb - push the makeshift barriers aside. This podcast was recorded at West Cork Literary Festival on 16 July 2024 and Hisham and Priscilla were in conversation with Maeve Higgins.----------------------------------------------------------------------------Hisham Matar was born in New York to Libyan parents, spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived most of his life in London. His memoir The Return was the recipient of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Award, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, Frances Prix du Livre Etranger Inter & Le Journal du Dimanche and Germany’s Geschwister Scholl Prize. Hisham is a Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts. His latest novel My Friends was published by Viking in January 2024.Priscilla Morris is a British author of Bosnian-Cornish parentage. She grew up in London, spending summers in Sarajevo, and studied at Cambridge University and the University of East Anglia, where she gained her PhD in Creative Writing. She teaches creative writing, most recently at UCD, and divides her time between Ireland and Spain. Her Sarajevo-set debut novel Black Butterflies was short-listed for the Women’s Prize 2023 and several other notable awards.Mark your calendars and join us in West Cork from 11-18 July 2025. Our 2025 line-up will be released in late March/early April and you can sign up for our newsletter to hear about it first.Support West Cork Literary Festival Become a Friend of West Cork Literary Festival to enjoy priority booking for our highly sought-after festival tickets. In particular, you will be supporting our free events for children and our outreach programmes to allow the festival to be accessible to everyone. Visit our festival bookshop Bantry BookshopFollow us on BlueSky SocialInstagramTwitter/XFacebookSubscribe to our YouTube channel

The Piano Player of Budapest: A True Story of Holocaust Survival, Music and Hope is Roxanne de Bastion's story of her grandfather, Stephen, and it was named 'one of 2024's most anticipated books' by BBC Culture. It is a story about a piano and its most prodigious player – how it, along with him, survived WWII. Some of Stephen's music is performed during the event with Roxanne singing live alongside recordings of his piano playing. This podcast was recorded at West Cork Literary Festival on 18 July 2024 and Roxanne was in conversation with Sue Leonard.----------------------------------------------------------------------------Roxanne de Bastion is a singer-songwriter and artist advocate. She has released two critically acclaimed albums that have been championed by the likes of Iggy Pop and Steve Lamacq. Her music has garnered praise in the Observer, NME, Record Collector and Rolling Stone Germany, and her pioneering DYI artistry and activism have been featured in the Metro, Huffington Post, LBC and Sky News. Roxanne has toured opening for Katie Melua, Howard Jones, Lambchop and Martha Wainwright and has performed at Latitude, Glastonbury and Cambridge Folk Festival. In 2018, she self-published her tour diaries Tales from the Rails and in 2021, she was the first artist to embark on a virtual UK tour when the pandemic hit. Roxanne sits on the board of the Featured Artist Coalition (alongside artists such as Dave Rowntree of Blur and Imogen Heap) and the PPL Performer Board, where she represents artists’ rights. She is the founder of the independent artist conference FM2U (From Me to You). Roxanne has held talks at Brunel University, Reeperbahn Festival and re:publica on topics such as ‘Designing your Own Future’ and ‘Female is not a Genre’ and has been invited to speak on panel discussions at international music industry conferences such as The Great Escape, Folk Alliance and the English Folk Expo. Roxanne also hosts a radio show on North London’s Boogaloo Radio. The Piano Player of Budapest is her first book.Mark your calendars and join us in West Cork from 11-18 July 2025. Our 2025 line-up will be released in late March/early April and you can sign up for our newsletter to hear about it first.Support West Cork Literary Festival Become a Friend of West Cork Literary Festival to enjoy priority booking for our highly sought-after festival tickets. In particular, you will be supporting our free events for children and our outreach programmes to allow the festival to be accessible to everyone. Visit our festival bookshop Bantry BookshopFollow us on BlueSky SocialInstagramTwitter/XFacebookSubscribe to our YouTube channel

'The Teacher’s Pet' is a true-crime podcast by Hedley Thomas, The Australian newspaper's award-winning national chief correspondent, and it has had more than 52 million downloads worldwide. Hedley’s book of the same name now brings us behind the scenes of this incredible true story of the disappearance of Lynette Simms from Sydney's idyllic northern beaches in 1982. Lyn's husband Chris Dawson was a rugby league star, a popular teacher and exceptionally close to his identical twin brother, Paul. But this facade of domestic bliss shattered as Chris became infatuated with the family's babysitter – his 16-year-old student – a girl he moved into Lyn's home and bed just two days after her disappearance. This podcast was recorded at West Cork Literary Festival on 16 July 2024 and Hedley was in conversation with crime novelist Catherine Ryan Howard.----------------------------------------------------------------------------Hedley Thomas is The Australian newspaper’s national chief correspondent, specialising in investigative reporting with an interest in legal issues, the judiciary, corruption and politics. He has won eight Walkley awards including two Gold Walkleys; the first in 2007 for his investigations into the fiasco surrounding the Australian Federal Police investigations of Dr Mohamed Haneef, and the second in 2018 for his podcast, The Teacher’s Pet, investigating the 1982 murder of Sydney mother Lynette Dawson. The Teacher’s Pet podcast has had more than 52 million downloads worldwide and his book of the same name was published by Macmillan Australia in October 2023.Mark your calendars and join us in West Cork from 11-18 July 2025. Our 2025 line-up will be released in late March/early April and you can sign up for our newsletter to hear about it first.Support West Cork Literary Festival Become a Friend of West Cork Literary Festival to enjoy priority booking for our highly sought-after festival tickets. In particular, you will be supporting our free events for children and our outreach programmes to allow the festival to be accessible to everyone. Visit our festival bookshop Bantry BookshopFollow us on BlueSky SocialInstagramTwitter/XFacebookSubscribe to our YouTube channel

Jan Carson is a master of the short story form and she released a dazzling new collection of stories in 2024. Jan’s collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses contains bold, tender, surprising stories of youth and innocence, age and experience - and all the spaces in between. Fellow short story writer Thomas Morris was scheduled to be part of this event but was unable to take part on the day. His work and his 2023 story collection Open Up are referenced during this event. This podcast was recorded at West Cork Literary Festival on 17 July 2024 and Jan Carson was in conversation with Oonagh Montague.----------------------------------------------------------------------------Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. She has published three novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019. Jan’s latest novel, The Raptures was published by Doubleday in early 2022 and was subsequently shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her short story collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses was published by Doubleday in April 2024.Mark your calendars and join us in West Cork from 11-18 July 2025. Our 2025 line-up will be released in late March/early April and you can sign up for our newsletter to hear about it first.Support West Cork Literary Festival Become a Friend of West Cork Literary Festival to enjoy priority booking for our highly sought-after festival tickets. In particular, you will be supporting our free events for children and our outreach programmes to allow the festival to be accessible to everyone. Visit our festival bookshop Bantry BookshopFollow us on BlueSky SocialInstagramTwitter/XFacebookSubscribe to our YouTube channel

Tobi Lakmaker's The History of My Sexuality is an irreverent and charmingly chaotic debut about queer sexuality and the highs and lows of your 20s caused a sensation in Europe on first publication. Tobi was named as the new literary talent of 2021 in Vogue magazine in the Netherlands. The novel was published in English in 2024 and his visit to West Cork was supported by the Dutch Foundation for Literature/Nederlands Letterenfonds as part of their New Dutch Writing programme. This podcast was recorded at West Cork Literary Festival on 16 July 2024 and Tobi was in conversation with Sasha de Buyl.----------------------------------------------------------------------------Tobi Lakmaker was born in 1994 and lives in Amsterdam. He writes columns for De Groene Amsterdammer and LINDA.meiden. The History of My Sexuality is his first book. It was translated into English by Kristen Gehrman and published by Granta in January 2024.Tobi Lakmaker’s attendance at West Cork Literary Festival is supported by the Dutch Foundation for Literature/Nederlands Letterenfonds as part of their New Dutch Writing programme. Mark your calendars and join us in West Cork from 11-18 July 2025. Our 2025 line-up will be released in late March/early April and you can sign up for our newsletter to hear about it first.Support West Cork Literary Festival Become a Friend of West Cork Literary Festival to enjoy priority booking for our highly sought-after festival tickets. In particular, you will be supporting our free events for children and our outreach programmes to allow the festival to be accessible to everyone. Visit our festival bookshop Bantry BookshopFollow us on BlueSky SocialInstagramTwitter/XFacebookSubscribe to our YouTube channel

2024 saw the publication of two highly anticipated debut novels by acclaimed Irish writers. Hagstone is the debut novel from award-winning essayist and editor of short story anthologies, Sinéad Gleeson, and Breakdown is written by Cathy Sweeney, an author best-known for her short stories. This podcast was recorded at West Cork Literary Festival on 18 July 2024 and Sinéad and Cathy were in conversation with fellow author Colin Barrett.----------------------------------------------------------------------------Sinéad Gleeson’s essay collection Constellations: Reflections from Life was published by Picador in 2019 and won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at 2019 Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. It was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Michael Deon Prize. She is editor of The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers (named for a line from Maeve Brennan, which includes a story by Brennan), The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland and The Art of Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories. Sinéad also collaborates with artist and musicians, with commissions from The Wellcome Collection, BBC, Frieze and various galleries. In 2022, with Kim Gordon, she co-edited This Woman’s Work: Essays in Music, published by White Rabbit Books. Hagstone is her first novel and it is published by 4th Estate in April 2024.Cathy Sweeney lives in Dublin. She studied at Trinity College and taught English at secondary level for many years before turning to writing. Her work has been published in various magazines and journals. Her collection of short stories Modern Times was published by The Stinging Fly in 2020 and her debut novel Breakdown was published by W&N in January 2024.Mark your calendars and join us in West Cork from 11-18 July 2025. Our 2025 line-up will be released in late March/early April and you can sign up for our newsletter to hear about it first.Support West Cork Literary Festival Become a Friend of West Cork Literary Festival to enjoy priority booking for our highly sought-after festival tickets. In particular, you will be supporting our free events for children and our outreach programmes to allow the festival to be accessible to everyone. Visit our festival bookshop Bantry BookshopFollow us on BlueSky SocialInstagramTwitter/XFacebookSubscribe to our YouTube channel