At a time when books are increasingly being challenged, taken off shelves or censored, this event celebrates the global importance of reading and freedom of expression. 

Our panellists include writer and activist Hilary McCollum, whose new novel, As a Lover, tells the true story of Radclyffe Hall, whose 1928 lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness was attacked by the right-wing press and censored in the UK; Ann Morgan, whose books include Reading the World and Relearning to Read, an invitation to read more widely and get comfortable with discomfort, and Belgian writer and librettist Gaea Schoeters, whose latest novels, Trophy and The Gift, grapple with masculinity and contemporary colonialism.

Chaired by author Lucy Caldwell, this event is devised in collaboration with Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann. 

Meet the panelists

Hilary McCollum is the author of two novels, a childhood memoir and four plays. Her second novel, As a Lover (Bella Books, 2026), interweaves the coming-of-age story of a young Irish firefighter with the suppression of the first openly lesbian novel written in English. Hilary is a creative activist on violence against women and girls, lesbian visibility, and the environment.

Ann Morgan is an author, speaker and editor based in Folkestone. Ann’s writing has been published widely, including in the Guardian, Independent and Financial Times, and by the BBC. In 2012, she set herself the challenge of reading a book from every country in a year – a project that led to a TED talk and to the non-fiction book Reading the World: How I Read a Book from Every Country. Her debut novel, Beside Myself, has been translated into eight languages. Crossing Over, her latest novel, draws on her experience living just a few minutes from where a number of the small boats crossing the Channel land. She is Literary Explorer in Residence of the Cheltenham Literature Festival.

Gaea Schoeters has written all sorts of texts, from travelogues and novels to operas and theatre plays as well as children’s books. Her latest novels, Trophy and The Gift, are bestsellers in Germany and have been translated in 21 and 11 languages respectively. The music theatre productions she made together with composer Annelies Van Parys have been performed in opera houses and at festivals throughout Europe. Additionally, she has translated the work of Kae Tempest into Dutch and writes columns and essays about current topics for various newspapers and literary magazines. She is also the curator and host of the Dead Ladies Show, a literary programme featuring ‘forgotten’ women. Her work, praised for its descriptive and detailed writing style, is situated between formal experiment and social engagement.

Born in Belfast in 1981, Lucy Caldwell is the author of four novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and three previous collections of short stories. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018, she was also the editor of Being Various: New Irish Short Stories in 2019, and has won the E. M. Forster Award, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Walter Scott Prize among others. 

Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann is an all-Ireland organisation whose aims are: to promote literature in and about Ireland both nationally and internationally; to defend worldwide the right of writers to responsible freedom of expression as defined in the PEN Charter, and to foster international understanding through the appreciation of literature.