An Evening with Anne Enright

"We love the people we damage" Anne Enright

One of Ireland’s most celebrated authors, Anne Enright is drawn to life’s contradictions. Her latest novel The Wren, The Wren is a multi-generational saga that paints a portrait of the complicated relationships at the heart of an Irish family.

Join us for an exclusive evening at the Library with Man Booker Prize Winner and first Laureate for Irish Fiction Anne Enright, in conversation with podcaster Astrid Edwards, as she discusses her new book exploring obsessive love, messy mother-daughter relationships, and the pursuit of a poetic life.

Book your tickets now.

Doors open at 6.30pm, with a bar and Readings book stand where you can purchase Anne's book.

"One of the greatest living novelists” The Times.

About Anne Enright

Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has written two collections of stories, published together as Yesterday’s Weather, one book of non-fiction, Making Babies, and six novels, including The Gathering, which won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, The Forgotten Waltz, which was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and The Green Road, which was the Bord Gáis Energy Novel of the Year and won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. In 2015 she was appointed as the first Laureate for Irish Fiction, and in 2018 she received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature.

About Astrid Edwards

Astrid Edwards is a teacher, podcaster and critic. She hosts The Garret: Writers and Publishing and sometimes judges literary prizes. She is undertaking her PhD at the University of Melbourne exploring publishing during the climate crisis.

About The Wren, The Wren

Carmel had been alone all her life. The baby knew this. They looked at each other, and all of time was there. The baby knew how vast her mother's loneliness had been.

Nell - funny, brave and so much loved - is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape. For her mother, Carmel, Nell's leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. And across the generations falls the long shadow of Carmel's famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions.

This is a meditation on love: spiritual, romantic, darkly sexual or genetic. A multigenerational novel that traces the inheritance not just of trauma but also of wonder, it is a testament to the glorious resilience of women in the face of promises false and true. Above all, it is an exploration of the love between mother and daughter - sometimes fierce, often painful, but always transcendent.