Jan Carson & Louise Kennedy at Manchester Central Library

Two award-winning stars of Irish writing join us to discuss their acclaimed novels. Jan Carson’s The Raptures is a playful, inventive whodunnit set in the small town of Ballylack. Hannah’s classmates are dying of a mystery plague to which she’s immune. As each of the dead children visit her, Hannah begins to question her religious upbringing as the adults fall apart. Louise Kennedy’s beautifully vivid Trespasses tells of an affair between Catholic primary teacher Cushla and Michael, a Protestant lawyer nearly twice her age. Set in and around Belfast against a backdrop of the Troubles, lives are changed forever.

Jan’s second novel, The Fire Starters, won the EU Prize for Literature. Her stories have won the Harpers Bazaar short story competition and been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. Louise has been twice shortlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award and is the author of the acclaimed collection The End of the World is a Cul de Sac. Hosted by Caroline Magennis, Reader in 20th & 21st Century Literature at University of Salford.