The Art of Reading is a monthly book club hosted by Colm Tóibín, the Laureate for Irish Fiction.
Each month, the Laureate meets a different library book club to discuss a book by an Irish writer, highlighting outstanding Irish writing and celebrating the reader and book clubs.
The selected titles celebrate new work by contemporary Irish writers and the latest episode features Colm in conversation with Elaine Feeney about her acclaimed novel, How to Build a Boat.
Elaine Feeney’s second novel, set in a small, fictional Irish town on the west coast, tells the story of Jamie, a boy who seeks to connect with his dead mother.
'Feeney's prose,' The New York Times has written, 'is both careful and relaxed — detailed in its description of place and character and of the effortful human urge to find order in the natural world.’
Elaine Feeney writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. She has published three poetry collections including The Radio was Gospel & Rise. Her debut novel As You Were won Dalkey Book Festival’s Emerging Writer Prize, The Kate O’Brien Prize, Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize, and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the Rathbones-Folio Prize. Feeney’s short fiction was published in The Art of The Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories and she has published widely including The Paris Review, The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Poetry Review and The Guardian.
How to Build a Boat was published in 2023 and was nominated for The Booker Prize. A new collection, All the Good Things You Deserve was published in 2024. She lectures at University of Galway.
The Art of Reading Book Club is an initiative of the Arts Council and the Laureate for Irish Fiction, in partnership with Libraries Ireland. Find out more here.
