Renowned Author Claire Keegan to open 2025 Festival

Renowned author Claire Keegan was raised on a farm in Ireland. At the age of 17, she travelled to New Orleans, where she studied English and Political Science at Loyola University. She returned to Ireland in 1992, and her highly acclaimed first volume of short stories, Antarctica, was published in 1999.

Her stories are translated into 30 languages and have won numerous accolades. Antarctica won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Walk the Blue Fields won the Edge Hill Prize, awarded to the finest collection of stories published in the British Isles. Foster won the Davy Byrnes Award and was last year chosen by The Times as one of the top 50 works of fiction to be published in the 21st century. Small Things Like These was shortlisted for the 2022 Rathbones Folio Prize. It won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2022 and was recently featured on Oprah Winfrey's Book Club.

She will be in conversation with acclaimed Irish writer Sinéad Gleeson. A night not to be missed.

Tickets on sale March 7th.