Friday, 17th October

Festival Pass (all events) | €50

David Butler & Celia de Fréine

2.30pm, Cork City Library | Free, unticketed

David Butler’s novel City of Dis (New Island) was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, 2015. In addition to White Spirits (2025), Arlen House published his second story collection, Fugitive, in 2021, while his latest novel, Scorched Earth, will be published under pen-name Dara Kavanagh by Dedalus Books in October. Awards for the short story include the Maria Edgeworth (twice), Benedict Kiely, Colm Tóibín, ChipLit Fest, ITT/Redline and Fish International.

Buy White Spirits (Arlen House).

“The prose has a strong Hiberno-English flavour and, in the first-person narratives, the idiolects lure you in with their rough lyricism … his portraits are compellingly rich and their colour flares in the mind long after the book is closed.” — Rosemary Jenkinson

Celia de Freine is a poet, playwright, novelist, biographer and screenwriter who writes in Irish and English. Awards for her poetry include the Patrick Kavanagh Award, Gradam Litríochta Chló Iar-Chonnacht and the British Comparative Literature Association Translation Award. Her plays have won numerous Oireachtas awards and her film and television scripts have won awards in Ireland and America. She has been nominated four times in different categories in An Post Irish Book Awards. Even Still (Arlen House, 2025) is her first collection of short stories in English.

Buy Even Still (Arlen House) and visit the author's website.

“Celia de Fréine is a marvel. With its unique, characteristically stark, witty perspective on the lives of women and girls, this collection is a welcome addition to her already extensive, multi-genre body of work in both Irish and English.” — Catherine Dunne

(Moderator) Clíona Ní Ríordáin is a critic and translator who teaches at the University of Notre Dame. Recent publications are English Language Poets in University College Cork 1970-1980 (Palgrave, 2020), and Francis Bacon’s Nanny, the final volume of Maylis Besserie’s Irish trilogy (Lilliput, 2024). The first, Yell, Sam, If You Still Can, was runner up for the 2023 Scott Moncrieff Award.

From the Well Showcase

4.00pm, Cork City Library | Free, unticketed

Jellied Minds and Other Short Stories is the 21st edition of Cork City Council and Library Service annual ‘From the Well’ short story anthology. Patrick Holloway, who featured in this anthology in 2023, selected 20 stories from over 150 submissions, five of which will be read at this event by the writers.

After years in Arts Education, Camille Dorney retrained as a Primary Teacher. She attended the Bantry Library Writer’s Group. Her stories have appeared in previous From the Well anthologies. She has engaged in public readings of her work, including the West Cork Literary Festival. Camille is working on a middle-grade novel and flash fiction.

Billy Fenton writes poetry and short fiction. His poetry has been widely published. His stories have been published in The Four-Faced Liar, Crannóg, Ogham Stone, Galway Review, and the From the Well anthology 2025.

Valentine Jones is an 18-year-old Limerick writer. Places they have been published include Paper Lanterns, The Wild Umbrella, Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Times Youth Supplement, and the From the Well anthology. They have received the Enda O’Brien Young Writers Award, and the Sr. Joan Bowles Youth Award.

Sheila Killian is a novelist and short story writer. Her work has been listed in the Fish Publishing, Seán Ó Faoláin, From the Well and Molly Keane short story competitions and has been broadcast on RTÉ. She lives in Limerick and spends as much time as she can by the sea.

Daniel McCarthy is a writer from West Cork. He has an MA in Creative Writing from UCC. His work has been published in Abyss and this year’s From the Well anthology.

Marni Appleton & Rebecca Ivory

7.30pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Marni Appleton is a writer living in London. She holds a PhD in creative-critical writing from the University of East Anglia. Her short stories have been published in The Tangerine, Banshee and The London Magazine, among others. Her first short story collection, I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY, was published in February 2025.

Buy I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY (The Indigo Press).

“Truthful, dark, and walking the line between delicious and disturbing, I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY is a rich and haunting read. Savour or gorge, this is a very special collection of deceptively cutting stories.” —Lottie Hazell

Rebecca Ivory is a writer based in Dublin. Free Therapy is her debut collection. Her stories have been published in The Stinging Fly, Fallow Media, Tangerine and Banshee. She is a recipient of the Arts Council Literature Bursary and in 2024, she was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. She is currently working on her first novel.

Buy Free Therapy (Penguin).

“Beneath these stories runs a pulsing darkness, a restless humour, a palpable and astute distrust. Here are all the ways we scam each other, but most of all ourselves.” — Saba Sams

(Moderator) Laura Cassidy is a writer from Co. Kildare, living in Cork city. She is a co-founder and contributing editor of Banshee and reviews books for The Irish Examiner. Laura is a recipient of the Cecil Day-Lewis Literary Bursary Award along with several awards from the Arts Council. Her short fiction recently appeared in The Pig’s Back literary journal.

Gina Chung & Mahreen Sohail

9.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Gina Chung is a Korean American writer in New York City. She is the author of the novel Sea Change, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and a B&N Discover Pick, and the short story collection Green Frog, which was a Good Morning America Book Buzz Pick, an NPR Best Book of the Year, and longlisted for the New American Voices Award. She has received the O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction, a Pushcart Prize, two APALA Adult Fiction Honors, and a Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellowship.

Buy Green Frog (Picador) and visit the author's website.

“From praying mantises to toothy cats to shape-shifting kumihos—a menagerie of creatures stalk Gina Chung’s stories, bringing their appetites and apprehensions to these spellbinding narratives of love, loss, and belonging. In Green Frog, magic comes in many forms: from outright enchantments to small miracles of grace.” — Allegra Hyde

Mahreen Sohail was born in Pakistan. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College where she studied as a Fulbright scholar; and was a Writing Fellow at A Public Space and a Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. Her work has appeared in Granta, the Kenyon Review, the Pushcart Prize Anthology (XLII), and elsewhere. She lives in Washington DC.

Buy Small Scale Sinners (A Public Space).

“In these pages, a flawless eye for detail meets a daring instinct to tack and swerve and startle; stories rewrite themselves paragraph by paragraph and sometimes in the space of a single phrase, always following the pulse of life. Small Scale Sinners is wonderful on sisterhood, on sex, on Pakistan, on coming of age.” — Garth Risk Hallberg

(Moderator) Beverly Parayno’s debut short story collection WILDFLOWERS (PAWA Press, 2023) was shortlisted for the 43rd Annual Northern California Book Award in Fiction, winner of a 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal and 2024 National Indie Excellence Award in AAPI Fiction. She lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California, where she co-facilitates the Cameron Park Library Writers Workshop.

Image credits: Gina Chung photographed by S.M. Sukardi