Gallery, Level 3, dlr LexIcon

Join broadcaster Rick O’Shea in conversation with authors Elaine Feeney and Paul Murray. Nominated for An Post Irish Book Awards – Book of the Year, How to Build a Boat is the beautiful novel about a young boy whose mission transforms the lives of his teachers and brings together a community. Winner of the An Post Irish Book Awards – Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Nero Prize, The Bee Sting explores the failures and vulnerability of the Barnes family and the consequences of a single moment that can change the direction of life.

Elaine Feeney is a writer from the west of Ireland. Her 2020 debut novel, As You Were, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Irish Novel of the Year Award, and won the Kate O'Brien Award, the McKitterick Prize, and the Dalkey Festival Emerging Writer Award. Feeney has published three collections of poetry including The Radio Was Gospel and Rise, and her short story ‘Sojourn’ was included in The Art of The Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories, edited by Sinéad Gleeson. Feeney lectures at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Paul Murray is the author of An Evening of Long Goodbyes, Skippy Dies and The Mark and the Void. An Evening of Long Goodbyes was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and nominated for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Skippy Dies was shortlisted for the Costa Novel award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and longlisted for the Booker Prize. The Mark and the Void won the Everyman Wodehouse Prize 2016. He lives in Dublin.

Rick O’Shea is a broadcaster with RTE, currently weekdays on RTE Gold. He was previously a presenter on RTE2FM and of The Book Show on RTE Radio 1. He runs Ireland’s largest book club - The Rick O’Shea Book Club on Facebook, hosts and curates public author interviews at festivals, and chooses the Eason Must Reads lists 4 times a year. He is a member of the An Post Irish Book Awards voting academy. Currently, Rick is literary curator for the annual UCD Festival and a board member of Fighting Words NI in Belfast. He’s a former judge of the Costa Book Awards and Dalkey Literary Awards, and a previous curator of the Waterford Writers Weekend.