Author Martin Waddell: ‘When I got blown up, I was no longer fit to write. I lost several years’
The author on writing stories with ‘emotional punch’ for children, walking in to a bomb during the Troubles, and his less-than-flattering opinion of writers as people
Colm Tóibín’s Long Island is Waterstones Irish Book of the Year
Books newsletter: A preview of Saturday’s pages; Richard Flanagan wins Baillie Gifford Prize; Irish translator wins Stephen Spender Prize; MS Readathon; (S)worn State(s) launch at MoLI; Never Too Late Award; Dublin Literary Award judges; Limerick Writers’ Centre launch; Rory Brennan dies
Children’s author Sibéal Pounder: ‘I was bullied at school. It made me analyse people in a forensic way’
Sibéal Pounder, author of children’s book Sprouts, on writing for ‘the most important people in the world’, her admiration for Violet Beauregard, and her ability to forensically analyse people
Ella Sloane wins Sarah Cecilia Harrison Prize
Books newsletter: Reading campaign for Dublin teenagers; Bookselling Ireland report; preview of Saturday’s pages
‘Small, strange, beautiful’ Orbital by Samantha Harvey wins 2024 Booker Prize
‘A book about a wounded world’ set on International Space Station is one of the shortest to win £50,000 award
Booker Prize 2024: who do you think will win?
Have your say on which of the six novels on the shortlist should emerge victorious
John Boyne: ‘I’ve reviewed books by friends and occasionally by antagonists but there’s only one I regret’
Author on latest book in his four-part cycle about abuse and inviting JK Rowling to his dream dinner party
Vona Groarke wins 2024 Michel Déon Prize
Books newsletter: a preview of Saturday’s pages; PEN Heaney Prize and Waterstones Book of the Year shortlists; Writers in the Attic; Robert Fisk archive at TCD; Little Island’s Carnegie success
Suad Aldarra awarded Rooney Prize for Irish Literature
Syrian-Irish writer’s memoir I Don’t Want to Talk About Home was published in 2022
Author Eliza Clark: ‘When you live in London you’re constantly at risk of seeing something mad and upsetting’
She’s Always Hungry author on her dislike of ‘forced’ short stories, her love of Prague and the best way to order your books
Luke Morgan wins Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award
Books newsletter: preview of Saturday’s pages; Caroline Madden book deal; Nicola Rose O’Hara film deal; John McGahern Prize deadline
Felicity Hayes-McCoy: ‘So many of Ireland’s revolutionary women felt disillusioned and betrayed after the State was set up’
The author on the genre she calls ‘uplit’, the ‘perfect balance’ of living between London and the Kerry Gaeltacht, and her admiration for Greta Thunberg
John Banville: ‘I expected to be dead, or at least gaga, by now’
Author on his new book, The Drowned, his enduring appetite for writing as he nears 80, and the most remarkable place he has visited
A tribute to Nell McCafferty
Books newsletter: Irish Writers’ Weekend in London; Kit de Waal to judge Women’s Prize for Fiction; Oscar Wilde exhibition; Korean prize for Anna Burns
Ian Rankin: ‘Serious writers are attracted to the crime novel because it takes on morally complex themes in a digestible way’
The Rebus creator on his flawed police inspector’s fall from grace, the Jekyll and Hyde sides of his hometown Edinburgh and the genius of Muriel Spark