23 – Ian Sansom

Welcome to Day 23 of our West Cork Literary Festival Advent Calendar. Our author today is Ian Sansom.

Ian Sansom is a novelist, journalist and broadcaster. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the Mobile Library and the Country Guides series of novels. He has worked as a columnist for both the Guardian newspaper and for the Spectator magazine and currently writes for the TLS, the Irish Times and the Dublin Review. He is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages, including Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Italian, Brazilian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Ian lived in Belfast for almost thirty years.

Ian is reading an extract from December Stories II which was published by No Alibis Press in November 2021. Today’s video unlocked on 23rd December 2021 and may be viewed below. Closed caption subtitles are available and may be turned on or off. Click on “youtube” or “full screen” icon in the video to watch it in full screen or visit youtube here.

About our WCLF Literary Advent Calendar

2021 was another wonderful year for Irish writing and so many incredible books by Irish authors and authors living in Ireland were released this year. Even though festivals returned in-person and online not every author had the opportunity to launch their books with a public celebration or to engage with audiences in the “usual” way. We’re delighted to bring you a small selection of these authors and we’ve invited twenty-four writers to submit a short video reading from their new books. Our selection is an attempt to show the wide range of Irish writing and in particular to focus on writers whose books we feel deserve more attention and those who were not previously featured in WCLF 2021 events. We hope that you will enjoy the chance to hear these writers reading their own work and to discover some new books for your reading piles.