Books and their Makers is a new podcast series, created in collaboration with the Museum of Literature Ireland and hosted on Radio MoLI, exploring the stories behind the books we read. It features conversations with authors, editors, publishers, agents, and translators, and highlights the many behind-the-scenes activities and workers involved in bringing writing to publication.
The series is presented by Dr Tim Groenland, School of English, Drama and Film, UCD, and supported by the project The Publishing Infrastructures of Contemporary Anglophone Literature, funded by Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland.
Episode 1: Paul Lynch & Juliet Mabey
When Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, a novel described by the judges as a ‘triumph of emotional storytelling,’ won The Booker Prize 2023, he became the sixth author from Ireland to win the prize. The award also marked the third Booker win for the independent publisher Oneworld. In this episode – the first in a series, Books and their Makers, exploring contemporary publishing – Lynch appears conversation with Juliet Mabey, his publisher and the co-founder of Oneworld, as well as Margaret Kelleher, Professor and Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at University College Dublin, to discuss his novel, the Booker win, and independent publishing.
Episode 2: Gaëlle Bélem in Translation
Gaëlle Bélem’s novel There’s a Monster Behind the Door (2024) is a picaresque, brutal, and mordantly funny tale of a girl’s attempt to escape her sadistic parents’ reign of terror in Réunion in the 1980s. It is the first of two novels by the author to be published by the Sligo-based Bullaun Press, the first Irish publisher to take literature in translation as its focus. In this episode, the author and her translators Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert discuss the novel itself, the story of its translation, and how it came to be published in Ireland. The novel was originally published by French publisher Gallimard in 2020; its English translation became the first book from an Irish publisher to be nominated for the International Booker Prize, and the winner of the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses 2025.