The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Irish Writing

This Companion brings together leading scholars in the field of Irish studies to explore the significance of twenty-first-century Irish writing and its flourishing popularity worldwide. Focusing on Irish writing published or performed in the twenty-first century, this volume explores genres, modes and styles of writing that are current, relevant and distinctive in today’s classrooms. Examining a host of innovative, key writers, including Sally Rooney, Marion Keyes, Sebastian Barry, Paul Howard, Claire Kilroy, Micheal O’Siadhail, Donal Ryan, Marina Carr, Enda Walsh, Martin McDonagh, Colette Bryce, Leanne Quinn, Sinéad Morrissey, Paula Meehan, Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and Doireann Ni Ghríofa. This text investigates the sociocultural and theoretical contexts of their aesthetic achievements and innovations. Furthermore, The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First-Century Irish Writing traces the expansion of Irish writing, offering fresh insight to Irish identities across the boundaries of race, class and gender. With its distinctive contemporary focus and comprehensive scope, this multifaceted volume provides the first significant literary history of twenty-first-century Irish literature.

Anne Fogarty is Professor Emerita of James Joyce Studies at University College Dublin. She was Associate Director of the Yeats International Summer School 1995-7 and Director of the Dublin James Joyce Summer School 2017-2023. She was editor of the Irish University Review 2002-2009 and co-editor with Luca Crispi of the Dublin James Joyce Journal 2008-2023. Currently, she is editor for the Irish Writers series for Bucknell University Press. She has co-edited several collections of essays on Joyce and recently co-edited with Marisol Morales-Ladrón, Deirdre Madden: New Critical Perspectives (2022) and with Tina O’Toole, Reading Gender and Space (2023). She has published widely on aspects of twentieth- and twenty-first century Irish writing, especially on the Revival period, and on women authors. Her new edition of Dubliners is forthcoming from Penguin in 2025.

Eugene O’Brien is Professor of English Literature and Theory, and Head of the Department of English Language and Literature in Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. He is the editor for the Oxford University Press Online Bibliography project in literary theory, and of the Routledge Studies in Irish Literature series. His books include Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Climate Crisis (with Andrew J. Auge) (Routledge, 2021) and Reimagining Irish Studies for the Twenty-First Century (with Eamon Maher) (Peter Lang, 2021). His latest book, Reading Paul Howard: The Art of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly, was published by Routledge in 2023. A co-edited volume of Études-Irlandaises 49 (1), Contemporary Irish Poetics (with Eóin Flannery), and a co-edited book, The Frontier of Writing: A Study of Seamus Heaney’s Prose, with Ian Hickey (Routledge) were published in 2024. He is currently working on a monograph on Micheal O’Siadhail (Routledge).