Rory Gleeson, Kevin Power and Cathy Sweeney in conversation with Aingeala Flannery

For a writer, failure can mean the waste of years’ worth of work. Three contributors to The Dublin Review – Rory Gleeson, Kevin Power and Cathy Sweeney – join Aingeala Flannery to talk about the writer’s life in a culture that fetishises failure – but only if it has been followed by success.

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Cathy Sweeney is a writer living in Wicklow. She has published short fiction and essays in various magazines and journals and her work has been featured in six issues of The Dublin Review. In 2020 her collection of short stories, Modern Times, was published by The Stinging Fly Press and by W&N. Her debut novel Breakdown was published by W&N in 2024. Cathy’s second novel, The Villa, based on the months Oscar Wilde spent living in Naples in 1897, is forthcoming in 2028. She is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and is represented by Matthew Turner at Rogers, Coleridge; White Agency.

Rory Gleeson is a novelist and scriptwriter. His debut novel Rockadoon Shore was published by John Murray Press. His essays and short stories have been published in Granta, The Dublin Review, The London Magazine and The Stinging Fly. He was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award and his work has been performed on RTE Radio 1, Sky Arts, BBC Radio 4, and at Symphony Space in New York.

Kevin Power is the author of two novels, Bad Day in Blackrock (2008) and White City (2021), and a collection of essays, The Written World (2022). He is also a critic who writes for various publications, including The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, The New Statesman, and The Irish Times. He is Associate Professor of Literary Practice in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin.

Aingeala Flannery is deputy publisher of The Dublin Review and producer of The Dublin Review Podcast. She is a writer, broadcast journalist and teacher. Her book The Amusements won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year in 2023.

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