Books for Breakfast (Ireland)
A podcast focussing on fiction and poetry hosted by poets and writers Peter Sirr and Enda Wyley. Also features the Toaster Challenge where guest writers are given the time it takes to make toast to talk about a book that has resonated with them.
Episodes
On today's show we travel down the road to Carlow University Pittsburgh's MFA in Creative Writing Program during its annual June residency at Trinity College, Dublin where we have been invited to interview novelist Caitriona Lally about her latest book, the memoir Home Economics. So grab that flat white, latte, tea and rasher sandwich and have a listen to Caitriona's fascinating account of balancing life as a cleane...
On today's episode we visit 11 Parnell Square in Dublin for the launch of Poetry Ireland/Éigse Éireann's restored headquarters. We hear about the new performance spaces, education resources and Seamus Heaney Library and talk to director Claire Power about her vision for the building and the organisation. We also talk to Poet in Residence Sean Borodale about his poetry and his plans for the residency. Sean's widely a...
On today’s show we talk to Joseph Woods, director of the Strokestown Poetry Festival about what this year's programme will offer poetry lovers this May Bank Holiday weekend in Strokestown House. Ands we welcome back to the breakfast table poet and Irish Times reviewer Adam Wyeth to talk with us about recent poetry publications that have grabbed his attention. Adam is himself an award-winning and critically acc...
This morning we talk to Mary Costello about her new novel A Beautiful Loan.
My name is Anna, and for some time now, I have been trying to account for certain events in my life – my adult life, that is – which, from this vantage point of forty-five years, I often find baffling …
In 1985 Dublin, nineteen-year-old Anna Hughes is in thrall to Peter Gallagher, an older, worldly man. Anna is...
In this episode we go to one of our favourite places in Dublin, Hodges Figgis bookshop in Dawson Street, to interview Cathy Galvin on the occasion of the launch of her collection of poems from Bloodaxe, Ethnology, A Love Song for Connemara. We also meet and hear poet John F. Deane, who spoke about Cathy’s book and read some of his own recently published Carcanet collection, Jonah and Me, a Poetry Society Recom...
We’re back for the first episode of 2026. This week we’re back in Books Upstairs in Dublin to interview Hugo Hamilton about his latest novel, Conversation with the Sea.
Fleeing his failed marriage in Berlin, Lukas Dorn revisits the West of Ireland, the place of his honeymoon two decades earlier. While his former wife is being cancelled at work and his daughter is arrested at a street protest, he ...
Mince pie and Christmas cracker laden, today’s breakfast table is very festive indeed as we celebrate the best of books and cultural events in 2025. To help us celebrate we’ve gathered at our table four writers who have each been asked to choose just one book, either fiction or non fiction that they’ve especially admired this year and one cultural event – film, exhibition, music or anyt...
This morning we welcome poet and critic Ciarán O’Rourke to our breakfast table here in Dublin 8. Ciarán has published two collections of poems with Irish Pages Press, The Buried Breath in 2018 and Phantom Gangin 2022, and he also runs the poetry website ragpickerpoetry.net. Ciarán talk about five recent books of poetry: Eiléan Ní Cuilleanáin, New Selected Poems; Catherine Ann Cullen, Storm Damages; ...
On today’s episode we travel to IMMA and the Dublin Book Festival to meet and talk with İlhan Sami Çomak, a Kurdish Turkish poet who has spent almost thirty years imprisoned in Turkey. He was arrested in 1994 and charged with membership of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Part. In jail, Çomak released eight books of poetry and became one of Turkey's longest serving political prisoners. He is here in Dublin ...
On this morning's episode we talk to Ger Reidy about his latest poetry collection, Clay; Liam Carson tells us about the latest edition of IMRAM, the Irish language festival and the increasing visibility of Irish, and I chat to Enda Wyley about her book, Sudden Light and about winning the Lawrence O' Shaughnessy Award for poetry.
This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ea...
On today’s episode poet and critic Adam Wyeth reviews nine new poetry collections. Under the microscope are Infinity Pool by Vona Groarke; Belfast Twilight by Liam Carson; Harbour Doubts by Bebe Ahley; Over Here by Alan Gillis; Chic to be Sad by Molly Twomey; New Arcana by Jesica Traynor; The Convent of Mercy by Tom French; À la Belle Étoile: The odyssey of Jeanne by Afric McGlinchey and Scaffold by Thomas Bre...
In this episode we invite Colm Tóibín to the breakfast table to discuss his new book A Ship in Full Sail: The Laureate Lectures and Other Writings. The book collects the blogs he wrote during his term as Laureate for Irish Fiction, one written each month on topics as diverse as Artificial Intelligence, reading Ulysses, the discomfort of Salman Rushdie in the wilds of County Dublin, Bob Dylan in concert, ...
On this morning's show novelist Henrietta McKervey talks to us about four recent novels: Fair Playby Louise Hegarty, Airby John Boyne, Murder takes a Vacation by Laura Lippman andLong Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.
And she also does a surprising Toaster Challenge. Listen to see what she chooses ...
Henrietta McKervey is the author of the acclaimed novels What Becomes of Us, The Heart of Everythi...
This episode sees us visiting Dublin's historic United Arts Club where Enda interviews Mary O'Donnell about her latest collection of short stories, Walking Ghosts.
Praise for Walking Ghosts
'Each story shines in its own distinctive light.' —Neil Hegarty
'O'Donnell is unflinching in her ability to display humanity in all its flaws and vulnerabilities.' —Mary Costello
'The magic of her writing is in the ...
On this episode we drop in to the Carlow University Pittsburgh MFA summer programme in Trinity College, Dublin to interview Sarah Moss about her latest novel, Ripeness.
'Tender and rueful . . . Sarah Moss is a marvel of insight and eloquence' - Emma Donoghue
'One of our greatest living writers' - Katherine May, author of Wintering
More Praise for Sarah Moss:
'Throws much contemporary writing into the shade' - Hila...
On this episode we talk about this year's International Literature Festival Dublin which runs from 16-25 May, and where Enda will be interviewing novelists Gethan Dick and Patrick Holloway. We also talk to Karin-Lin Greenberg about Your Are Here, her novel set in a dying mall in upstate New York.
"Lin-Greenberg’s web of characters illustrate the complex lives of ordinary people." —Laura Zornosa, Time...
In this episode, on Poetry Day, we cross the Atlantic and. breakfast in Miami, where we talk to Cuban American poet Richard Blanco about his Homeland of my Body: New and Selected Poems, a rich, accomplished, intensely intimate collection with two full sections of new poems bookending Blanco’s selections from his five previous volumes. We also feature this year’s Strokestown International Poetry Festival,...
On this episode we talk to poet novelist and critic Mary O’Donnell about Mary O’Malley’s The Shark Nursery, Patrick Holloway’s The Language of Remembering, ! All’ ARME /? by Eilish Martin and Beginnings Over and Over: Four New Poets from Ireland, edited by Leeanne Quinn.
We also give a shout out to a special anthology for One Dublin One Book, Dublin, Written in our Hea...
Finding inspiration in the local and near at had, attentive to climate concern and global unrest, to home and homeless, belonging and welcome, concern and global and welcome – on today’s episode we talk to poet and publisher Pat Boran about his eight collection Hedge School.
'A writer of great tenderness and lyricism' – Agenda, UK
'... local and international, full of wisdom and wry humour ...'...
‘A beautiful tapestry of late middle age reckoning’ – today we interview the writer Mary Morrissy about her new collection of short stories, Twenty-Twenty Vision, published by Lilliput Press. For her Toaster Challenge, Mary chooses The Transit of Venusby Shirley Hazard. Get the coffee on!
This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Intro/outro music: ...
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