Join us as we celebrate the life and legacy of Seán Rocks, whose unwavering support and involvement with the Dublin Book Festival spanned more than a decade. Seán’s invaluable contribution to celebrating and championing the arts in Ireland inspired countless audiences and artists alike. Authors Kevin Barry and Kathleen MacMahon, poet Paula Meehan, and composer and musician Colm Mac Con Iomaire join arts journalist Paula Shields in conversation as they remember his enduring influence and generosity.

Kevin Barry is the author of four novels, most recently The Heart in Winter, and three short story collections, including, That Old Country Music. His awards include The Impac Dublin Literary Award, The Goldsmiths Prize, The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, The EU Literature Prize and The Sunday Times Short Story Prize. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. Kevin also works as a screenwriter and a playwright. His most recent play is The Cave which was staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in summer 2025. His stories and essays regularly appear in The New Yorker, Harpers, Granta and elsewhere. He co-edits and publishes Winter Papers, Ireland’s annual anthology for the arts. He is a member of Aosdána. Originally from Limerick city, Kevin lives in County Sligo.

Kathleen MacMahon is the author of four novels and numerous short stories. Her work has been listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Irish Book Awards, and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. Her fifth novel, Other People’s Lives, will be published in May 2026 by Penguin Sandycove.

Paula Meehan was born and raised in Dublin’s north inner city. Her award-winning poetry has garnered widespread popular and critical acclaim. Her poetry has been scored for choirs, for solo voice, has been made into songs by artists from diverse traditions — the folk, including the legendary Christy Moore, and the avant garde; has been scored for many choirs; has been made into wee films; has been danced; has been inflicted on the youth of the country in school & university; has been 8/1 to come up on the Leaving Cert. She was Ireland Professor of Poetry, 2013–2016 and Imaginary Bonnets with Real Bees in Them, her public lectures from the Chair, are published by UCD Press. Recent publications are As If By Magic: Selected Poems, (2020) and The Solace of Artemis (2023) which received the Pigott Prize for Poetry. They are published by Dedalus Press, Dublin.

Colm Mac Con Iomaire is a highly acclaimed Irish composer and multi-instrumentalist, renowned for his deeply expressive work influenced by the natural world, his native Irish language and homeland. His diverse body of work spans film scores, theatre productions, dance performances, and three critically celebrated solo albums. A prolific collaborator, Colm has toured internationally, continually blending traditional and contemporary styles in his compositions. Raised in a musically rich household—his father a renowned broadcaster, song collector and Sean Nós singer and his mother a talented pianist—his work is a reflection of his cultural heritage and artistic upbringing.

Paula Shields is an arts journalist, working on Arena, RTE’s flagship arts show on Radio 1. Other highlights include making the IFTA award-winning TV documentary, Fairytale of New York, in 2017, judging the 2017 and 2018 Irish Times Theatre Awards, and contributing an essay to the latest Sunday Miscellany Anthology in 2023.

.