Event: An Evening with Colm Tóibín

To mark the publication of Colm Tóibín’s highly anticipated short story collection The News from Dublin (Picador), Writing on the Wall is delighted to reveal that the acclaimed Irish author will appear at WoWFEST26 on Sunday 31 May, chaired by Professor Frank Shovlin.

Tóibín will discuss The News from Dublin, a striking and deeply moving sequence of stories that span continents and generations, from wartime Ireland to Barcelona, Argentina and beyond. Moving between lives marked by exile, secrecy and loss, these luminous narratives explore family ties, displacement, and the enduring pull of home and memory.

Born in Enniscorthy in 1955, Tóibín is the author of numerous acclaimed novels and short story collections, including The Empty Family, Brooklyn, The Master, The Magician and Long Island. A three-time Booker Prize finalist, he has received the David Cohen Prize for Literature, served as Laureate for Irish Fiction (2022–2024), and was Chancellor of the University of Liverpool until 2017.

He will be joined by Frank Shovlin, Professor of Irish Literature at the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies and an acclaimed critic and editor. Shovlin is renowned for his scholarship on James Joyce and John McGahern, including The Letters of John McGahern (Faber & Faber) and the forthcoming biography John McGahern: A Writing Life.