Life, Death & the Body in Ireland: Doireann Ní Ghríofa & Sophie White

We are delighted to bring together two incredible talents who have recently delivered instant classics. Both published by Tramp Press, which has – to put it mildly – been knocking it out of the park with its cultivation of such authors in recent years. 

Both Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Sophie White write about women’s bodies in Ireland with aching honesty, in ways spiritual, laced with history (and humour), and charged by lived experience.

Chaired by Aine Toner, join us for this event with two of Ireland’s most exciting, innovative writers. 

Looking to buy a book by one of the writers involved in this year's programme? Check out our official Festival Bookstore partner, No Alibi’s, who have created this special Belfast Book Festival page on their website which features the books and collections of the writers at the 2021 Festival. Plus they are offering a 10% discount on all of the Festival titles! 

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a bilingual author and poet based in Cork, whose awards include a Lannon Literary Fellowship, a Seamus Heaney Fellowship from Queen’s University, Belfast, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Doireann’s A Ghost in the Throat (2020) has won numerous accolades including the An Post Irish Book of the Year award and the Hodges Figgis book of the year, and her latest poetry collection, To Star the Dark, was published in April.

Sophie White is a writer and podcaster from Dublin, whose first book, Recipes for a Nervous Breakdown (2016), a hybrid of memoir and cookbook, was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards, as was her first novel Filter This (2019). More recently, Corpsing: My Body and Other Horror Shows was published this year; a series of ferociously candid essays that reflect the ‘lived reality of Irish womanhood in the 21st century’. 

Aine Toner is a journalist who is currently the Features Editor of the Belfast Telegraph and Sunday Life. She has been Ireland AM’s book reviewer for four years and has published two commercial fiction titles: The Four of Us and Let’s Talk About Six.