Friday, 16th October

HOWL New Irish Writing Showcase

2.30pm, Cork City Library | Free, unticketed

HOWL New Irish Writing is a biennial literary journal dedicated to showcasing emerging and established Irish writers. Co-founded in 2022 by Róisín Leggett Bohan and Lauren O’Donovan, HOWL is a platform not only for writers residing in Ireland but also for the expansive international Irish diaspora. HOWL publishes stories and poems in English and as Gaeilge to celebrate the diverse and multicultural facets of modern Irish identity.

John Armstrong was born in London and raised in Castlebar, County Mayo. He holds an MPhil in Irish Writing from Trinity College Dublin. He lives in Dublin.
Edelle Dwyer’s work has appeared in New Irish Writing (The Irish Independent), Frazzled Lit and is forthcoming in HOWL. She has been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize, the Oxford/42 New Writing Prize, the Wells Festival of Literature, and longlisted for the Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize.
Amanda Hill is an Irish writer who regularly works (and borrows more than she can read) from her local Clondalkin libraries. She has recently completed an MA in Creative Writing in UCD and has been published in Sparks Literary Journal and HOWL.
Johnny Roche’s writing has appeared in HOWL, Tintreach, and Irisín. An MA student in Creative Writing, he is writing his debut novella for the Gerald Griffin Competition, titled The Fear.

Órfhlaith Foyle & John O’Donnell

4.00pm, Cork City Library | Free, unticketed

Órfhlaith Foyle is a short story writer, poet and dramatist and lives in Galway. Doire Press published her third collection of short stories Three Houses in Rome in September 2023. She wrote and directed the radio dramas May’s End and How I Murdered Lucrezia, premiered on Newstalk Radio in October 2021 and 2023 respectively. Foyle received an Arts Council of Ireland Literary Bursary in October 2025 to assist her in writing her fourth short story collection The Other Poet Drives a Black Mercedes, published by Doire Press in autumn 2026.

Buy The Other Poet Drives a Black Mercedes.

“These stories are full of paradox and perception: violence and tenderness sit side by side, childhood language absorbs horror, and the familiar holds steady against emotional upheaval. Again and again Foyle offers us discordant, unforgettable images.” — Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

John O’Donnell’s work has been widely published. Awards include the Irish National Poetry Prize, New Irish Writing Awards for Poetry and Fiction, and the RTÉ Francis McManus Short Story Award. He has published five poetry collections. His short story collection Almost the Same Blue was a Sunday Independent ‘Book of the Year’. Rainbow Baby, an RTÉ radio play, won a New York Festivals Radio Award. His documentary about the 1979 Fastnet disaster, Back To The Rock, was broadcast on RTÉ’s Doc On One. An IWC Novel Fair winner in 2024, his latest short story collection is Mr Hoo and other stories.

Buy Mr Hoo and other stories.

“John O’Donnell captures us at our best and at our worst in a tremendously satisfying collection laced with devastating indictments, unexpected reprieves and emotional detonations that catch your breath.” — Claire Kilroy

(Moderator) Jennifer Horgan is a Cork poet, teacher and weekly columnist with The Irish Examiner. Her work appears in various journals including Poetry Ireland Review, Cyphers, HOWL New Irish Writing and Abridged. Her debut collection Care is published by Doire Press.

Senaa Ahmad & Katie Farris

7.30pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Senaa Ahmad is the author of the collection The Age of Calamities, named a Best Book of 2026 by British GQ and Debutiful. Her work was the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and the Sunburst Award, and a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Fiction. She’s received support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Speculative Literature Foundation. Her short stories have appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Best Canadian Stories, and elsewhere, and have been translated into Japanese, Turkish, and Croatian. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Buy The Age of Calamities and visit the author's website.

“An astounding debut, so full of wonder, outrage, invention, fireworks, sheer brilliance. Ahmad breaks time and turns history upside down and inside out. This book is so beautifully written and so completely fresh, I was left stunned at the sheer originality of Ahmad’s extraordinary voice. You have never seen anything like this before.” — Edward Carey

Katie Farris’s most recent book, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, from Alice James Books (US) and Liverpool University Press (UK), was shortlisted for the 2024 TS Eliot Poetry Prize. She’s also the author of boysgirls (Tupelo Press 2019), and the co-translator of many works mainly from the Ukrainian, including Lesyk Panasiuk’s Letters of the Alphabet Go To War (Sarabande 2026). Her most recent work appears in Granta, Poetry, The New York Times, and several Pushcart Prize anthologies. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts.

Buy boysgirls.

“In turns horrifying, hilarious, and awe-inspiringly gorgeous, boysgirls explores “the politics of metamorphosis”: change is the driving force of this fantastic, phantasmal book. Gender turns us all to monsters, deforms us, molds us into shapes we did not consent to—but also offers new (im)possibilities, new opportunities for change and transformation.” — Chase Berggrun

(Moderator) Neleigh Olson holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Kentucky and an MA in “The Beatles, Popular Music and Society” from Liverpool Hope University. She is a writer based in Louisville, Kentucky and is co-owner and Managing Editor at GreenHorse Books.

Marie-Helene Bertino & Bret Anthony Johnston

9.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5

Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of five works of fiction, most recently Exit Zero, a story collection. Her novel Beautyland was an American Book Award Winner, a National Book Critics Circle Finalist, a New York Times Notable 100 and Time Magazine Top 10 Book of 2024. A two-time winner of the O. Henry Prize, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction (2025), The Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Short Fiction Award, and The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellowship in Cork, Ireland. She is currently the Ritvo-Slifka Writer-in-Residence at Yale University.

Buy Exit Zero and visit the author's website.

“When a short story works, it can wield truly occult powers, exerting a force disproportionate to its dimensions. Through all of “Exit Zero” Bertino blurs the line between writer and magician.” — Molly Young

Bret Anthony Johnston is the internationally bestselling author of Encounters with Unexpected Animals: Stories, We Burn Daylight, Remember Me Like This, and Corpus Christi: Stories. Among his many honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Glasgow Prize, and The Sunday Times Short Story Award, “the world’s richest and most prestigious prize for a single short story.” His work has been widely translated and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. He is the Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.

Buy Encounters with Unexpected Animals: Stories and visit the author's website.

“Johnston’s exquisitely drawn men and women are riders on the storm … where the past is too easily washed away and the ocean has no memory … Stunning and complex.” — Los Angeles Times

(Moderator) Sarah Harte has won or been shortlisted for prizes in Ireland and the UK including The Bryan MacMahon short story prize, The Bridport Prize, the Manchester Fiction Prize, the Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Prize, and the Fish Short Story Prize. She is completing a novel and is a columnist for The Irish Examiner.

Image credits: Senaa Ahmad photographed by Calvin Thomas