5 – Alix O’Neill

Welcome to Day 5 of our West Cork Literary Festival Advent Calendar. Our author today is Alix O’Neill.

Alix O’Neill is a freelance journalist, who has written for Marie Claire, The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, Stella, Red, Grazia, The Spectator and The Pool. She has appeared as a broadcast commentator and newspaper reviewer on Sky News, as well as Good Morning Britain, BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, LBC Radio, Radio London and TalkRadio’s Badass Woman’s Hour. In 2019, she had a regular online column for Red on her family’s search for the good life abroad. Alix lives in Southwest France with her husband and two young sons. The Troubles With Us is her first book.

Alix is reading an extract from The Troubles With Us which was published by Fourth Estate in June 2021. Today’s video unlocked on 5th 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.