Miss this event in 2022? Watch it back now on Crowdcast!

Join us for a conversation between two of Ireland’s most exciting and most cherished authors at this one-off, opening night event!

Cecelia’s Freckles is the story of one young woman’s quest for connection in the midst of a lonely life. Louise’s IDOL is an intense and unrelenting interrogation of the world of online influencers, and of the constantly blurring boundaries between the real and the virtual. Both novels are concerned with the search for the self in a chaotic world that seems to demand more and more while giving less and less. Both offer their readers vivid and authentic characters whose stories will resonate long after the last page.

The event will be chaired by writer and broadcaster Louise McSharry.

Cecelia Ahern is a Dublin-based Irish novelist. She has written seventeen bestselling books, two of which have been adapted for the screen. She has created several TV series in the US and Germany, and she has also written two YA novels. Her critically acclaimed collection of short stories, Roar, is now an Apple Original series from Apple TV+, starring Nicole Kidman, Cynthia Erivo, Meera Syal and Alison Brie.

Louise O’Neill grew up in Clonakilty. Her first novel, Only Ever Yours, was released in 2014 and won the Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, the Eilís Dillon Award for a First Book, and the Bookseller’s inaugural YA Book Prize. Her second novel, Asking For It, was published in September 2015. Her second novel for adults, After the Silence, was published in 2020 and won Crime Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Louise contributes regularly to Irish TV and radio, and has a weekly column in The Sunday Times.

‘It’s time to recognise Cecelia Ahern as one of our finest writers’ – John Boyne

‘IDOL is fresh, glamorous, and surprising, taking an issue we all care about and with a deft twist, recalibrating our position. Louise O’Neill is not afraid to take on a taboo but somehow always makes it utterly compelling’ – Marian Keyes

Presented with support from Irish Country Magazine.