In person at Town Hall Theatre, Galway

Also streamed live online

Tickets pay-what-you-can. Booking here

What good is the truth when your town has embraced a lie? 

Both Jan Carson’s The Raptures and A.K. Blakemore’s The Manningtree Witches grapple with questions of social repression, magical thinking and all-too-real violence as their protagonists try to survive in a world turned upside down. Join two of the finest novelists at work today as they discuss their work on Cúirt’s centre stage. In conversation with Rick O’Shea.

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. Her first novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears, was published in 2014 to critical acclaim, and her second novel, The Fire Starters (2019), won the EU Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Dalkey Novel of the Year Award. She specializes in running arts projects and events with older people, especially those living with dementia.

A. K. Blakemore is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, a translator of Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyo (My Tenantless Body, Poetry Translation Centre), and author of The Manningtree Witches (Granta), winner of the 2021 Desmond Elliott Prize, and shortlistee for the Costa Prize for Best First Novel.

In partnership with the Desmond Elliott Prize.