Olive Heffernan is an award-winning science journalist who writes about oceans and climate change. Her work has been published in Nature, WIRED, National Geographic, Scientific American, New Scientist and BBC Wildlife, among other outlets. Now freelance, Olive spent a number of years with Nature covering climate change, including as first chief editor of the research journal Nature Climate Change. In … Read More

Ocean Vuong is the author of The New York Times bestselling poetry collection, Time is a Mother (Penguin Press 2022), and The New York Times bestselling novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press 2019), which won the Mark Twain Award and has been translated into 38 languages. A recipient of a 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Grant, he is also the … Read More

Minnie Driver is one of the worlds best known and beloved actresses. She’s also a gifted singer and songwriter, and in Managing Expectations she brings her formidable storytelling skills to her own life. The ‘memoir in essays’ is suffused with warmth and humour, and charts Minnie’s unconventional childhood, her subsequent fame and beyond.

Martin Doyle is Books Editor of The Irish Times, where he has worked since 2007. He is a former Editor of The Irish Post in London, where he worked from 1992 to 2001, and also worked for The Times in London from 2001-2006. He is the author of Dirty Linen: The Troubles in My Own Place (Merrion Press, 2023) which … Read More

Máiría Cahill is a former Irish Senator and Councillor. At the age of sixteen she was abused by a member of the IRA and waived anonymity in 2014. This led to a furore in the Irish media and debates in Dáil Éireann and the Northern Irish Assembly, culminating in an investigation by Sir Keir Starmer and the NI Police Ombudsman, … Read More

Lyse Doucet is a Canadian journalist who is the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent and senior presenter who reports across the BBC’s domestic and global channels. She received an OBE in 2014, the Order of Canada in 2019, and became a fellow, FRSGS, of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society last year. Lyse has been reporting for the BBC for more than … Read More

LOUISE KENNEDY grew up a few miles from Belfast. She is the author of the Women’s Prize Longlisted novel, Trespasses, and the acclaimed short story collection, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac, and is the only woman to have been shortlisted twice for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award (2019 and 2020). Before starting her … Read More

Kai Strittmatter was for more than a decade the China correspondent for Germany’s national newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Fluent in Mandarin, he has studied China for more than 30 years, including extensive stints in Xi’an and Taipei. He is now a member of the advisory board at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. His most recent book We Have Been Harmonized: Life … Read More

Justine McCarthy is an award-winning journalist, with over a dozen awards to her name. In a career spanning several decades, she has written for many Irish newspapers including the Irish Independent, Sunday Tribune, Sunday Times and Irish Independent. She has been an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Limerick and is author of two books: Mary McAleese: The … Read More

The thousands of miles that troubadour Josh Okeefe traveled from his birthplace to his current home of Nashville, Tennessee, tell just one small part of a nomadic life in music which actually spans generations and encompasses myriad genres, traditions and disciplines. Although a relatively new artist, the young guitar-and-harmonica-playing singer-songwriter delivers unforgettably potent lyrics with the gravitas of a seasoned … Read More