Burning Books Ireland

Tanya Sweeney tells Ruth McKee which books she’d save if her house was on fire. 
Tanya Sweeney is a journalist and Weekend magazine columnist at the Irish Independent and is a regular contributor on Irish radio & TV. Her work in the music, film & TV industries helped inspire her debut novel, Esther is Now Following You (Penguin), a funny, fresh and deeply affecting story about celebrity fandom and what happens when it all becomes a bit too real.

Annemarie Ní Churreáin tells Ruth McKee which books she’d save if her house was on fire. 
Annemarie Ní Churreáin is a poet from the Donegal Gaeltacht, Ireland. Her books include Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017), Town (The Salvage Press, 2018), The Poison Glen (The Gallery Press, 2021), and Hymn to All the Restless Girls (The Gallery Press, 2025).  She is a recipient of the Irish Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award and a co-recipient of The Markievicz Award. 
Ní Churreáin has held literary fellowships in the U.S. and throughout Europe. She was the 2022-23 Decades of Centenaries Artist in Residence at Donegal County Archives. Ní Churreáin is the Poetry Editor at The Stinging Fly Magazine.

Elaine Feeney tells Ruth McKee which books she’d save if her house was on fire. 

Elaine Feeney is an acclaimed novelist and poet from the West of Ireland. Her debut novel, As You Were, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Irish Novel of the Year Award, and won the Kate O’Brien Award, the McKitterick Prize and the Dalkey Festival Emerging Writer Award. How to Build a Boat was also shortlisted for Irish Novel of the Year, longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a New Yorker Best Book of the Year.

With her third novel, Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way, Feeney was shortlisted again for Irish Novel of the Year and won the Library Association of Ireland Author of the Year. Feeney has published the poetry collections Where’s Katie?, The Radio Was Gospel, Rise and All the Good Things You Deserve, and lectures at the University of Galway.

Audrey Whitty talks about the importance of place, an early passion for history, and the mystery of time as she tells Ruth McKee which books she would save if her house was on fire.  

Audrey Whitty is an Irish archaeologist, librarian and curator, and the director of the National Library of Ireland.

Gill Perdue talks about fairytales, the Sue Barton series, her experience of boarding school and much more as she tells Ruth McKee which books she’d save if her house was on fire. 

Gill Perdue is the author of bestselling crime novels If I Tell, When They See Me, and most recently The Night I Killed Him, all published by Penguin.