In a letter written in June 1962 but only recently published, Samuel Beckett paid tribute to his Paris publisher Jérôme Lindon. In the course of the tribute, Beckett revealed that he was on the cusp of abandoning writing altogether before Lindon accepted his great, groundbreaking novel Molloy for publication in 1950: "It would have taken only this last little no thank you for me finally to see that that was it." The idea seems scarcely imaginable, not just in relation to Beckett himself but for the whole of contemporary literature and theatre. Without Molloy and its companions, Malone Dies and The Unnameable, the novel would be a very different beast. Without Waiting for Godot, the theatre might still be waiting for its revolution.

There is a Romantic notion of the creative writer as a driven, irrational unstoppable force. Writers have no choice but to do what they do - the Muses pull their strings and they dance. It is not an entirely fanciful notion - we know that writers will continue to write even under the most appalling conditions of oppression and censorship. But censorship and oppression at least tell writers that they matter, that they are dangerously powerful. Apathy is much more insidious. The idea that nobody gives two hoots about you saps the spirit.

We almost never know about those who give up.

By definition the writers we know about are those who persevered and were rewarded. The lucky break, the sympathetic ear, the chance encounter, are standards of literary biography. But of those to whom these things never happened, there are no biographies. Most of the time, this may be quite right - nobody cares because the work wasn't any good in the first place. But sometimes it is very good and still nobody cares. The most exciting Irish fictional debut of recent years is Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing. It has been garlanded with awards and acclaimed in all the most influential places. But it took the best part of a decade to get it published and even then, that old chance encounter was crucial: McBride's husband got talking to the owner of a bookshop in Norwich who was starting a small press and the rest is history.

Since its establishment by David Marcus, the Hennessy New Irish Writing page has been the most important way of turning that fatal “last little no thank you” into the vital first little yes please. It is, apart from all its other merits, a standing rebuke to the celebrity culture that has become increasingly prominent in publishing. It exists for the unfamous, the as yet obscure, the writers who are just writers, not names, not brands. Through the devoted work of its successive editors - Marcus, Anthony Glavin and Ciaran Carty - it has been one of the English-speaking world’s great literary incubators. I don’t think there’s anything quite like it in mainstream newspapers anywhere else. Its principles are simple and unwavering - a short story and some poems every month, written by writers who have not yet published books, chosen merely because they are good, because there’s something in them that demands attention. The fruits of those principles will now be available on the last Saturday of every month in The Irish Times.

The Irish Times is delighted to be the new home to New Irish Writing, and not just because of our admiration for the care and integrity that have shaped the page’s rich history. The big thing we hope to bring to it is not just space in print and online, it is readers. Ask any of those who send their work to New Irish Writing what it is they are hoping for and they will give you a simple answer - to be read. The judgement that Ciaran Carty and his co-editors Dermot Bolger and Anthony Glavin make is equally simple - this is worth reading. Not everything is. In this golden age of self-publishing and self-promotion, it still matters that a forum that has a deep history, that combines a rooted tradition with an in-built commitment to risk and innovation, stakes its reputation by drawing attention to a story or a poem. The attention that is drawn is, of course, yours. The Irish Times is about its readers - their open-mindedness, their curiosity, their willingness to hear the voices of writers they do not yet know. For the writers, access to those qualities at the right time can make all the difference.