Readings by Lisa McInerney & Elizabeth Reapy with Q&A

Lisa McInerney is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, editor and screenwriter. She is best known for her debut novel, The Glorious Heresies, which was the 2016 winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the 2016 Desmond Elliott Prize, the 2018 Ireland Francophonie Ambassadors’ Literary Award (Hérésies Glorieuses) and the 2018 Primo Edoardo Kihlgren for European literature (Peccati Gloriosi). It has been translated into nine languages since. It explores salvation, shame and the legacy of Ireland’s twentieth-century attitudes to sex and family. Her follow-up second novel, The Blood Miracles, won the 2018 RSL Encore Award and has been translated into five other languages. The third instalment of the series, The Rules of Revelation was launched May 2021.

Elizabeth Reapy is Mayo County Council Writer in Residence for 2021. Originally from Claremorris, she received an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from UCC. Her debut novel Red Dirt won Newcomer of the Year at the 2016 Irish Book Awards. In 2017, she was awarded The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. She was one of the Dublin UNESCO City of Literature Writers-in-Residence in 2018. Her second novel Skin was released in 2019 and at present, she's completing her first feature length screenplay. Reapy said she is "honoured to be awarded this residency and she looks forward to connecting, collaborating and creating with the Mayo writing community over the next few months".