Kevin Barry and Martin Doyle in conversation with Paula Shields

A Hosting: Interviews with Irish Writers 1991-2026 (Lilliput Press) is a captivating new collection of interviews by Books Editor of The Irish Times, Martin Doyle. Featuring conversations with Ireland’s most talented and successful writers, at different stages of their careers, this is a portrait of the Irish literary world as it has evolved in the past four decades. Martin will be joined by acclaimed Irish author Kevin Barry, who features in the book, for an evening of conversation with arts journalist Paula Shields.

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Kevin Barry is the author of four novels and three story collections. His awards include the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and the Lannan Foundation Literary Award. His stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta and elsewhere. His novel, Night Boat to Tangier, was an Irish number one bestseller, was longlisted for the Booker Prize and named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by the New York Times. He also works as a playwright and screenwriter, and he lives in County Sligo, Ireland.

Martin Doyle is Books Editor of The Irish Times and a former Editor of The Irish Post. He is the author of Dirty Linen: The Troubles in My Home Place (Merrion Press, 2023), which was shortlisted for Irish Nonfiction Book of the Year, and A Hosting: Interviews with Irish Writers 1991-2026 (Lilliput Press, 2026). He has contributed essays to The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices (Unbound, 2021) and The Routledge Handbook of the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace (Routledge, 2023) and edited A History of The Irish Post (London, 2000).

Paula Shields is an arts journalist, working on Arena, RTE’s flagship arts show on Radio 1. Other highlights include making the IFTA award-winning TV documentary, Fairytale of New York, in 2017, judging the 2017 and 2018 Irish Times Theatre Awards, and contributing an essay to the latest Sunday Miscellany Anthology in 2023.

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