Read Irish Women Challenge 2025

30 days, 30 prompts

The Read Irish Women Challenge is, as I have previously noted on this here blog yoke, one of my favourite things on social media. (I had typed a whole other thing about my less-favourite things, but let’s skip to…) It’s been going for a few years now, and in an era where Irish women’s fiction seems ‘hot’, it may seem superfluous. Sure aren’t we sick of the wimmin, you might groan.

The assumption that women writers getting attention is a thing that gets ‘a bit much’ after a few years is part of the problem, of course. All right, they’ve had a go - can we get back to the ‘normal’ state of affairs, please, which is The Men As Default? (Some recent conversations about the state of publishing would have you believe that the men just can’t catch a break these days, which is not supported by looking at the actual books coming out, or their critical reception/attention.) I am sympathetic to the itchiness around reducing any group to one particular aspect of their identity, certainly, but sexism, both on a personal and structural level, persists. We may be bored of hearing about it (and living with it); doesn’t mean it’s gone away.

But I’m here today for the book recs. Every day in the challenge there’s a different prompt, and sometimes I put more thought into it than others; I’ve tried not to include too many repeats from previous years but this is year seven of the challenge, so there will inevitably be some. It’s absolutely not intended as any kind of definitive list, in other words - more of a snapshot. (Let me point you again to the Read Irish Women Challenge account, which has many brilliant picks for each day!)

Pavilion Theatre, Sun 27th April (l-r - Nadine O’Regan, Sinéad Gleeson, Liz Nugent, Elaine Feeney, Roisin O’Donnell)

My picks:

1 Breakdown - Cathy Sweeney

2 Freya Harte Is Not A Puzzle - Maebh Collins

3 Openings - Lucy Caldwell

4 The Wardrobe Department - Elaine Garvey

5 Songs For Ghosts - Clara Kumagai

6 Care - Jennifer Horgan

7 Long Live Evil - Sarah Rees Brennan

8 Sisters of the Moon - Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick

9 Great Granny Webster - Caroline Blackwood

10 The World Between The Rain - Susan Cahill

11 Only Ever Yours - Louise O'Neill

12 Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau - Sheena Wilkinson

13 My Grandmother's Secrets - Clair Wills

14 All The Money In The World - Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

15 (TBR pile) Skipshock - Caroline O’Donoghue; Ordinary Saints - Niamh Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin; Some of Our Parts - Laura Kennedy

16 Astray - Emma Donoghue

17 A Good Enough Mother - Catherine Dunne

18 Ravelling - Estelle Birdy

19 Wired That Way - Niamh Garvey (ed.)

20 Savage Her Reply - Deirdre Sullivan

21 Daughter of Winter and Twilight - Helen Corcoran

22 An Interesting Detail - Kimberly Campanello

23 The Ethics of Cats - Alice Kinsella

24 Bird’s Nest Soup - Hanna Greally

25 Good Behaviour - Molly Keane

26 Not My Problem - Ciara Smyth

27 Skin Deep - Liz Nugent

28 The Lodgers - Eithne Shortall

29 Body of Evidence - Hazel K Larkin

30 Nesting - Roisin O’Donnell

And for last year’s picks…