The search for the best unpublished writers in Ireland and Britain has begun with the launch of the 2026 Nero New Writers Prize in association with Brunel University of London.
Started in 2025 to celebrate the best unpublished writers, the prize aims to discover the writing stars of the future and support their development. Entrants are asked to submit a previously unpublished short story (a piece of fiction or narrative non-fiction) of up to 5,000 words. It can be written for children or for adult audiences and should be a self-contained piece of work.
The winner of the Nero New Writers Prize will receive a cash prize of £3,000, alongside a scholarship to study for an MA in Creative Writing at Brunel, an introductory meeting with a literary agent and more great prizes.
The prize will be judged by Paul Murray, bestselling author and winner of the 2023 Nero Gold Prize, Irish Times literary critic and novelist, Helen Cullen, and Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo. A new award dedicated solely to Brunel students has also been announced.
Submissions are now open and will close on September 11th. For full details and an entry form visit nerobookawards.com.
Tomorrow’s books pages
In The Irish Times tomorrow, Alan Davies talks to Laura Slattery about his latest show, Think Ahead, and his books Just Ignore Him and White Male Stand-Up. David Sedaris tells Patrick Freyne about his latest book, The Land and Its People. Our summer fiction continues with Amateur Breeders by award-winning author Alice Ryan and there is a Q&A with Daniel Kraus about his career and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Angel Down.
Reviews are Mei Chin on a host of books about Marilyn Monroe; Séamas O’Reilly on the best new graphic novels; Claire Hennessy’s YA column; Andrew Lynch on Flirting with Evil: The Catholic Church in the Age of Total War and Globalisation by Ambrogio A Caiani; Paul Clements on Jan Morris: A Life by Sara Wheeler; Henrietta McKervey on The Quickening by Claire McGowan; John Boyne on Clara and Christina by Andrew Cunning; Lucy Sweeney Byrne on Kitten by Stacey Yu; Tom Lordan on Proust by Samuel Beckett; Eamon Maher on Religion in Irish Literature and Culture, edited by Willa Murphy and Chris Murray; Martina Evans on The Poems of Sylvia Plath; and Mícheál McCann on A Chorus of Ears: On ‘the voice of the poem’ by Denise Riley.
Dublin literary evening
Enda Wyley, Sarah Gilmartin and Mary O’Donnell are giving a reading on Thursday, August 6th, at 6pm in Hodges Figgis, Dawson Street, Dublin.
Irish Book Week
Bookselling Ireland and Publishing Ireland have announce details for this year’s Irish Book Week campaign, which will run from Saturday, October 17th until Saturday 24th.
The 2026 campaign ambassadors are Antrim-born children’s author and illustrator Paddy Donnelly; Galway-based author Catherine Doyle; Dublin-based children’s author Shane Hegarty; Cork native, author, journalist and playwright Carina McNally; and Belfast-based author and school principal Séamus Ó Tuama.
Now in its ninth year, Irish Book Week is a nationwide celebration of Irish bookshops, Irish books, publishers, writers, illustrators, and poets. The campaign aims to encourage people from across Ireland to shop local and shop Irish by visiting their local bookshops to discover and enjoy a range of exciting and interesting events, readings, parties, displays and much more.
Irish Book Week is part of the Booksellers Association’s year-round Books Are My Bag campaign – which also includes Independent Bookshop Week, the Indie Book Awards and other initiatives – which celebrates bookshops of all shapes and sizes and the unique social, cultural and economic value they bring to readers, communities and shopping destinations.
Donnelly, said: “I’m delighted to be an ambassador for Irish Book Week 2026. Bookshops are incredibly important to me and should be to all of us. They’re magical places of wonder and getting to create the artwork for this year’s campaign was such a treat. We are so lucky to have such a wealth of talent in Ireland, and our booksellers do such an amazing job at promoting Irish authors and illustrators.”
Abrahamson to direct David Nicholls’s You Are Here
Lenny Abrahamson (Room, Normal People) is to direct You Are Here, a witty and tender love story based on author David Nicholls’s acclaimed, number one bestselling novel of the same name. Nicholls (One Day, Starter for Ten, Us) has also written the eight-part adaptation, which will be produced by Element Pictures (Normal People, The Cage, Poor Things). Matthew Macfadyen (Succession, Legacy of Spies, Death by Lightning) and Claire Foy (All of Us Strangers, The Magic Faraway Tree, The Crown) will lead the cast as Michael and Marnie respectively. Set along the Coast to Coast walking trail from England’s Lake District to Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire, You Are Here will be filmed in the Lake District and around Manchester.
Helen Lederer launches Writing Funny podcast
Comedian Helen Lederer and author Chris Manby offer their fun version of a “masterclass” in writing and publishing in a new podcast series, Writing Funny, for and about witty women writers. Chris and Helen chat about how to write, where to write, when to write and – the holy grail for all writers – how to get an agent and published.
The Writing Funny podcast will be released weekly from Wednesday, August 12th: Episode 1 – A Writer’s Journey; Episode 2 – Finding Your Community; Episode 3 – Writing Comedy in Dark Times; Episode 4 – Inspiration; Episode 5 – The Art of Process; Episode 6 – Unpublished to Published; Episode 7 – CWIP Awards / Interviews with Alison Steadman, Vicki Michelle, Dawn Butler MP, Nicola Sturgeon, Kathy Lette and more.
Lederer founded the Comedy Women in Print Prize in 2019, to respond to the lack of women winning prizes or even having a prize to celebrate witty literature. CWIP now serves as an established literary platform to increase exposure for witty voices in comedy fiction, and to celebrate both fresh and established talent. Seventy seven witty books are now published from previously unpublished entrants, and around a third of longlisted authors have secured publishing and agent representation.
Dua Lipa literary festival
Dua Lipa’s London Literature Festival takes place from October 21st to November 1st, as part of London’s Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary year.
Lipa will be in conversation in the opening weekend with Zadie Smith (October 24th, 3pm), Mustafa (8pm), and Patti Smith (October 25th, 7.30pm), as well as curating a number of other events across the festival with her Service95 Book Club.
Lipa said: “Curating the line-up for the London Literature Festival with my Service95 Book Club has been a true joy and I’m so proud of the programme we have created. We’ll be joined by icons as well as emerging voices from across the arts the world needs to know. You will recognise some as friends of the book club, and others may be your first introduction, but ultimately, I wanted to create a space that brings together some of the most exciting writers, poets, and thinkers from around the globe. I’m looking forward to being both in-conversation and taking my seat in the audience at this iconic venue.”
Carol Ballantine book deal
Full Set has acquired Little Oases, a memoir by debut author Carol Ballantine, which is set to publish next March.
Little Oases is a tender exploration of raising identical twins with gender identities that are anything but identical. As the twins grow, doubt and uncertainty are present through every step of Carol’s parenting journey. This memoir offers a gender-diverse story that does not conform to the tropes, making important and necessary space for the ordinary. Little Oases is what two children, Jamie and Zack, taught Ballantine, an Irish feminist sociologist, about gender and sex.
Ballantine said: “When my twins were small, I read a lot of stories about gender diversity in childhood, but nothing captured my experience of curiosity, doubt and anxiety. I wanted to read about families who could hold the idea of gender lightly. In polarised times, I hope that our family’s story can open up more space for uncertainty and wonder in the lives of children of all genders and none.”
Publisher Eoin Purcell said: “When we read Little Oases for the first time, we were swept away by Carol’s voice and writing. It’s an open, honest and intimate memoir and a remarkable achievement for a debut author. We’re honoured that Carol has chosen to publish this book with Full Set and we’re looking forward to bringing it to readers.”
Dyer wins TLS Ackerley Prize
Geoff Dyer has won the TLS Ackerley Prize 2026 for Homework. The other two shortlisted books were Joe Dunthorne’s Children of Radium and Charlotte Northall’s Practicing Dying. The TLS Ackerley Prize is the UK’s only literary prize dedicated to memoir and autobiography.
Shaking Bog Festival
This year’s Shaking Bog Festival in Co Wicklow runs from August 21st-23rd, packed with creative engagement and outdoor experience designed to ignite conversations, inspire ideas and offer hope through fostering deeper connections with ourselves, each other and the natural world.
This year’s festival is about gathering – gathering together to celebrate bats, bogs and black sheep as well as immersing the audience in music, dance and literature in beautiful rural surroundings.
A central event will be the Black Sheep Project, which will celebrate heritage and nature with a deep dive into the revived traditions of using wool for craft and artistic purposes through an immersive programme of interactive activities, led by artists Caroline Bryne and Sharon Wells.
Other highlights include sean-nós dancer and choreographer Edwina Guckian with accomplished musicians and dancers for The Gathering Field; writer, poet, naturalist and science historian Helen Mcdonald, author of the acclaimed H Is For Hawk; and Trinidadian-Scottish poet and non-fiction writer Anthony Vahni Capildeo, winner of the 2025 Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry. Renowned novelist and essay writer Sara Baume will also discuss her latest novel, Opening Night, as well as her deep relationship with the natural world, which infuses all her work.
Kilkenny Arts Festival
Award-winning authors, academics, poets and political commentators will gather at St Canice’s Cathedral and the Parade Tower in Kilkenny Castle for the Literature and Talks programme of the Kilkenny Arts Festival.
Former President Mary Robinson will deliver the annual Hubert Butler Lecture, addressing concerns about food sovereignty and our right to have control over our own food system in this sold-out event hosted by Olivia O’Leary at St Canice’s Cathedral.
Writer, playwright and Human Rights Commissioner Rosaleen McDonagh will discuss her new novel, Contentious Spaces, with Maureen Kennelly. Sally Hayden will discuss her new book, This is Also a Love Story, with historian Catriona Crowe. Poet and writer Andrew Fitzsimons discusses the haiku master in Glory’s Aftermath: Translating Bashō.
Gillian O’Brien, professor of public history at Liverpool University, will give two lectures inspired by some of the themes running through the programme: Death Becomes Us, which looks at our own traditions and rituals, and often comic relationship with death; and Selective Memories, looking at Ireland’s history of migration in both directions.
For nearly 30 years, The Stinging Fly has been the mainstay of the Irish literary scene; at a special event on August 15th, a range of recent contributors will showcase their work, introduced by Stinging Fly publisher Declan Meade.
Poet in Residence Annemarie Ní Churreáin will close the series on Sunday 16th, in the company of Olivia O’Leary. Ni Churreáin draws inspiration from Irish women “troublemakers”, rebels and truth-tellers of all kinds, from folkloric figures like the banshee or the Cailleach, to Bridget Cleary, Sinéad O’Connor and Annie Murphy, as well as her own grandmother in her latest collection, Hymn to all the Restless Girls.
