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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · 2d

The days are getting shorter, it's now even cosier to curl up with a good book and it's getting ever closer to our next festival. For now, #savethedate CWBF returns in 2026 from Tuesday 21 - Sunday 26 April.

#bookinspo #bookfest #purecork

Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 26

big themes and emotions with skill and heart.

All Through the Night by Dani Robertson (non fiction)
Light pollution is something I’d never really thought about and this book is an eye-opener. A serious topic, but the writing is sublime; personal, relatable, funny and hopeful."

Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 26

characters and pin-sharp humour - these stories expose human complexity in all its dark and devastating entirety, with warmth and honesty.

Songs for Ghosts by Clara Kumagai (novel, YA)
Longing, love and heartbreak, inspired by Puccini's Madame Butterfly - this complex and captivating story tackles

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 26

longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Children's Fiction.

"I always read three books at once; a novel, a collection of short stories, and something non-fiction. It allows me to match my mood! My current reads are:

In the Movie of Her Life by Claire Hennessy (short stories)
I’m loving the edgy

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 26

Read 2016) The Book of Shadows (shortlisted Irish Literacy Association/Irish Book Awards) and The Book of Revenge. Elizabeth lives in West Cork where she fishes, grows her own veg and goes on plenty of outdoor adventures. Her latest novel, Arabella Pepper - The Wild Detective, has just been

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 26

E.R. Murray @elizabethrosemurray writes novels, short stories and poetry for children and young adults. Her novels include Arabella Pepper - The Wild Detective, featuring beautiful illustrations by Monika Pollak, and the award-winning Nine Lives Trilogy; The Book of Learning (Dublin UNESCO Citywide

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 21

confirms a special gift and presence in Irish poetry before reaching its wise conclusion: ‘There is so much to know, / so much I want you to hear.’

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 21

Boyfriend Over My Head’ and ‘Why We Don’t Have Kids’ it reaches to the Guggenheim Museum in Venice and considerations of art. There’s a constant sense of the aftermath of illness and the poems never shy from physical and emotional vulnerability. Brave in its honesty and directness, Chic to be Sad

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 21

weekend’) and striking detail, rest in ordinary settings — an ‘Online Staff Meeting’, an Aldi car park in Youghal.
Framed between work that centres on a fire in her family home this book displays an even wider range than her debut — from ‘My Brother’s Friends Draw Dicks’, ‘The Mechanic Speaks to My

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 21

Vultures, touched readers and listeners in uncommon ways. Reviewing it in Poetry Ireland’s Trumpet Annie Brown wrote that it ‘feels like a friend’. Chic to be Sad continues a young woman’s report from the front lines of experience. These fearless poems, rich in simile (a smile ‘wide / as a long

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 21

pitch-perfect detail.

This is poetry that makes the reader feel seen, known, and less alone. Chic to Be Sad doesn’t just capture what it means to live in a broken world, it dares to name the splinters and sing through them."

About the book:
Molly Twomey’s first collection, Raised Among

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 21

a kettlebell into her own jaw or pulling salvage from a burnt childhood home, Twomey refuses sentimentality in favour of something harder won: truth. Her lines crackle with wit and clarity, confronting shame, self-sabotage, and systems that fail the vulnerable, and all with astonishing grace and

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 21

recovery, and survival. In poems as sharp as scalpels and tender as touch, Twomey excavates the pain and absurdity of living with depression, eating disorders, economic precarity, and generational trauma, all while painting unforgettable portraits of girlhood, family, and love.

Whether swinging

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 21

She is an Irish writer, graduate of UCC, and lives in Cork with her family. Lauren was part of our Art of the Chapbook event along with Rafael Mendes and Jordan McCarthy.

"Chic to Be Sad is Molly Twomey’s ferocious, funny, and unflinching second collection. It is an astonishing anatomy of distress,

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 21

Lauren O’Donovan @LaurenODonovanW.bsky.social has won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award, Cúirt New Writing Prize, Southword Subscriber’s Poetry Prize and, most recently, the Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition. Lauren is a grateful recipient of Cork County Council Arts and Arts Council funding.

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 19

allowing its characters to shine & express in action what the depths of their souls harbour.

Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 19

tragedy be avoided?
Rippling across time like the river that runs through it, Selva Almada’s latest novel is the finest expression yet of her compelling style & singular vision of rural Argentina. This masterful novel reveals once again Selva Almada's unique voice & extraordinary sensitivity,

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 19

they drink & cook & talk & dance, & try to overcome the ghosts of their past. But they are outsiders, & this intimate, peculiar moment also puts them at odds with the inhabitants of this watery universe, both human & otherwise. The forest presses close, & violence seems inevitable, but can another

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 19

singular storyteller, in complete control, her unique voice rendered brilliantly by translator Annie McDermott."

About the book:
Three men go out fishing, returning to a favourite spot on the river despite their memories of a terrible accident there years earlier. As a long, sultry day passes,

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 19

the far-reaching legacies of violence. Stark & unsettling, sinister & haunting, Not A River unflinchingly lays out the beauty & brutality of our relationships with each other & the earth. Not a word feels out of place in this taut narrative as time warps, blurs & loops back on itself. Almada is a

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 19

the Arts panel along with Jesse Jones & @alannaoffield with Sarah Harte.

"Not A River by Selva Almada
Three men set out on a fishing trip along Argentina’s Paraná river to a place darkly alive with the ghosts of the past in this masterful novel that reckons with masculinity, guilt, grief, memory &

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 19

of the Dublin Book Festival. Auguries of a Minor God, her debut poetry collection, was published with Faber & Faber in 2021. She was appointed the Rooney Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin in 2023, & is currently on the jury of the 2025 Dublin Literary Award. She took part in our Diversity in

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 19

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is the Commissioning Editor at Skein Press @skeinpress, Poetry Editor at Fallow Media, & Contributing Editor with The Stinging Fly. A Next Generation Artist with the Arts Council of Ireland, she serves as a member of the Expert Advisory Committee to Culture Ireland & on the Board

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Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 14

debates and interpretations since its publication.

Cork World Book Fest @corkworldbookfest.bsky.social · Aug 14

summer beach, but definitely one to explore if the weather forces you inside."

About the book:
"Les Faux-Monnayeurs" is a novel by André Gide published in 1925 that deals with adolescence, homosexuality, literary creation and falsification. This complex and experimental work has given rise to many

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