It’s taken me almost a year since I first mentioned it to my agent, Lisa, and publisher Antony Farrell, but at last I’ve got around to putting my first novel The Fabulists, online for free downloaded under a Creative Commons Licence (or License, if you are American).
Initially I’ve posted it in WordPress, one chapter [...]

Had he lived till now, Samuel Beckett would be 100 today.
Happy Birthday, Mr Beckett, whether, to your surprise, you are in some conscious heaven, or you have merely rejoined the dispersed atoms of the universe.
Thank you for the humanity and wit you found in yourself and gave to us all.

This is old news by now, but in case you haven’t heard, John McGahern died suddenly on Thursday, March 30th. I was on the road when his death was announced, en route to read with the delightful Scaldy Detail contributors in The Potato Market in Crescent Quay in Wexford town, so it was a shock [...]

I was at Greg Delanty’s launch of his Collected Poems this evening (February 27) and a very enjoyable evening it was too.
Greg told me that I put him up in Dublin back in the eighties when he came to Dublin first and was attempting to become a poet - and that I have a [...]

Some lovely quotes in The Guardian from Beckett Remembering Remembering Beckett, to be published by Bloomsbury next month, in good time for Beckett’s centenary in April. Here’s just part of one, from Paul Auster:
Then, out of the blue, five or 10 minutes later, he leant across the table and said, ‘You really liked it, huh? [...]

The postal strike, now on hold, may have delayed some invites so if you are wondering when and where my new collection of verse, Dialogue in Fading Light, is to be launched, the answer is Hughes & Hughes Bookshop, Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, near the top of Grafton Street in Dublin, on Tuesday [...]

The Sea, says Banville, “is not the normal kind of Booker book”, and he hopes its success will send a long-overdue message to publishers that “literary fiction can make money. That’s very important in this image-obsessed age.”
A very much long-overdue message. Thank you, Mr Banville, for saying this. If I may be so bold, [...]

John Banville wins the Man Booker Prize, for his 14th novel, The Sea (Picador), with his second nomination for the prize. His first nomination, for The Book of Evidence, was 14 years ago. His wry advice to other authors was “just hang around and it will come. I hung around for many years [...]

The new The Stinging Fly, issue 2, volume 2, is now on sale.
Contributors include Simon Armitage, Siobhan Campbell, Philip Casey, Patrick Deeley, Tom Mac Intyre, Nuala Ní­ Chonchuir, Phiip Ó Ceallaigh and Sheila O’Hagan

Larks’ Eggs, Desmond Hogan’s New and Selected Stories, will be launched this evening in the Irish Writers’ Centre, 19 Parnell Square, Dublin 1, at 6pm.
Guest speaker Mannix Flynn.
The Lilliput Press