A new novel, Hold Me Now, draws closely on Irish Eurovision history for its heart-warming love story, whose original idea was dreamed up by Derek Mooney, with help from Niall Hatch and eventual ...

For Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1, listen to The Little People, by John MacKenna above. There's a rath near where we live, ...

Many of the 13 short stories gathered in John MacKenna’s new collection are linked by a recurring Jesus-like figure, called The Captain. Biblical references run as a loose theme through the author’s ...

Arklow library, home to Arklow Writers’ Group, will host a one-day creative writing workshop lead by award-winning Irish authors, Eleanor O’Reilly and John MacKenna, on Saturday, July 6. Formed in ...

I Knew this Place By John MacKenna Harvest Press, €15 It is almost impossible to read any of the essays in John MacKenna's latest collection without hearing them in his own voice, issuing from the ...

Memoir as a genre is enjoying enormous popularity these days, and comes in many sub-genres, focusing variously on illness, grief, divorce, childhood and mental health, among many other themes. John ...

When my agent, Jonathan Williams, suggested a selected short story collection, I thought of childhood boxes of Black Magic chocolates. Visiting the houses of my parents’ friends at Christmas, out ...

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In a 2023 interview with Fresh Air’s Terri Gross, Judy Blume discusses a period of “very late adolescent rebellion” as she approached her 40s. This delayed adolescence, Blume supposed, was a reaction ...

A meditation on a sometimes troubled father-son relationship... For Sunday Miscellany, listen to Father and Son by John MacKenna above... A group of us, men as it happens, were talking recently about ...

Joseph is just the carpenter you’d want to install your kitchen: an honest, diligent craftsman who does the job properly. When his girlfriend falls pregnant he helps raise her child even though he can ...