So you Want to be a Writer?

Morag Prunty worked for many years as a magazine journalist and editor. In the early 2000s, she turned to writing fiction. Writing under the name Kate Kerrigan, her works include Recipes for a Perfect Marriage, shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year, translated into 25 languages and optioned for film and her Ellis Island Trilogy, featuring feisty heroine Ellie Hogan, that made her a New York Times bestseller. 

The Lost Garden and The Dress – shortlisted at Irish Book Awards – followed to critical acclaim. In 2016 It Was Only Ever You won a RONA. Kate has a loyal following of readers in the U.K, Ireland, the U.S. and, increasingly, Australia. Kate is a ‘writers writer’ whose advocates include popular Irish writers Cecelia Ahern, Marian Keyes and Cathy Kelly.

Mike McCormack is an Irish novelist and short-story writer. He has published two collections of short stories, Getting It In the Head and Forensic Songs and three novels – Crowe’s Requiem, Notes from a Coma and Solar Bones. He has been described as “a disgracefully neglected writer”.

In 1996, he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. In 1998, Getting It In the Head was voted a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. A story from the collection, “The Terms”, was adapted into an award-winning short film directed by Johnny O’Reilly.

In May 2016, Dublin publisher Tramp Press published his novel Solar Bones; this went on to win the Goldsmiths Prize. The book was unusual in that it was written as a single sentence (albeit a long one, that spans about 270 pages). In June 2018, McCormack won the Dublin Literary prize of €100,000, the largest literary prize in the world for a single novel published in English, for his book Solar Bones. He was elected to Aosdána in 2018

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