Category Archives: Blog

This is my friend Lucy’s copy of ‘Easter 1916′. It’s 45 years old. Lucy’s teaching the poem today at Montclair. I suppose you could read this on an iPad. But. Well.

I’ve published a new short story in today’s Irish Times. It’s set on Christmas Eve in Co. Longford, as a family gathers and gets down to the complicated business of doing what families do at this time of year. Thanks … Continue reading →

I have a piece on today’s Guardian site about farming novels – well, novels set on a farm, or taking farmers (or, in the case of a novel like the wonderful Stoner, those from farming backgrounds)as their central characters. There … Continue reading →

First Published in the Sunday Business Post, August 7 2011 My novel, Solace, has just been published here in Ireland, but in the US it came out a couple of months ago, so May and June were spent touring various … Continue reading →

In today’s Irish Times, Una Mullally asks Philly MacMahon, Gavan Jennings and I to consider the philosophical implications of Jedward’s tweets. What results is just as messy as it ought to be.

Can’t wait to read with these two boyos. Tomorrow evening, August 9th, at the Parade Tower in Kilkenny, as part of what sounds like an amazing arts festival. More details here.

In today’s Irish Times, I’m writing about the process of writing about Ireland when you’re not actually living there. Lots of writers do this, of course, but I was particularly conscious of the fact that I was writing about a … Continue reading →

First the edits come, and you haul them out of the envelope and you think, huh, the edits of my very own novel. Then you have to work on the bloody things. Then the next set of edits come, and … Continue reading →

My friend Jack, who was born in 1919 and lived his whole life in a ramshackle little house on a decidedly non-ramshackle stretch of Park Avenue, died earlier this year. I hadn’t seen him for a while. He was a … Continue reading →