Christine Dwyer Hickey and Molly Aitken

Novelists Christine Dwyer Hickey and Molly Aitken discuss the Irish voice and the landscapes and history that inspire their work.

Dwyer Hickey was born in Dublin and is a recent winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the Dalkey Literary Award for The Narrow Land. Her latest is Our London Lives, an epic literary novel that follows two Irish characters, teenage runaway Milly and young boxer Pip, over 40 years in London. It explores themes of loneliness, alcoholism, the nature of love and gentrification.

‘Told with a wise and benevolent heart, this is a London novel that captures the living moment of the city across decades. Christine Dwyer Hickey is a national treasure’ Paul Lynch, Booker Prize-winning author of Prophet Song

Aitken was born in Scotland and brought up in Ireland. The rolling hills and wild coasts of Ireland inspire her work. Her novel Bright I Burn is a story of power, patriarchy and sexuality, set in 13th-century Ireland and based on the true story of the first woman in Europe to be condemned as a witch. The story gives a voice to a woman who dared to carve her own space in a man’s world but who has been lost to history.

A stunning rendition of one fierce Irish woman’s voice pitted against the patriarchal power constructs of Medieval Ireland’ Anya Bergman 

Part of the festival’s programme of Irish literature and culture.