Liz Nugent is very excited for upcoming Longford Literary Festival

This April, esteemed Irish crime novelist, Liz Nugent is making her way down to the highly anticipated Granard Booktown festival.

Now in its third year Booktown will be welcoming the crime writer to join the hallowed halls of incredible authors, journalists and poets that have attended before.

Irish crime novelists have been particularly gifted in the genre and in the last few years have been seeing huge appreciation for their work which Liz is delighted to see.

“Especially among women writers,” answered Liz, “If you look, over the last 10 years, maybe 12, it’s a long time since a man won the Irish Crime Novel of the Year award and we also have great, very top level writers in the world.”

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It’s clear that there is a unique camaraderie between novelists, especially crime novelists on this little island as Liz immediately launches into a discussion about her peers rather than her self.

“I mean there’s Jane Casey, she’s fantastic, John Banville, obviously with his crime stuff, Catherine Reinhart, they’re all really good writers apart from being good plotters.

“They’re all extremely competent writers, the writing style is of a very high standard as well at the moment and it’s a very modern phenomenon,” she explained.

Liz believes this new rise in crime fiction in Ireland is down to the idea that Ireland wasn't exactly crime ridden but that is not exactly true for everyone.

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She attributes the rise of women crime novelists to this idea, that Ireland in the past may not have exactly had much crime but this was not the case for women and many others, it just wasn’t discussed.

“I think Ireland when we were growing up in Ireland, when we were growing up in the 80s, I think that's the reason so many women are writing now,” she pointed out, “So many of those writers that I talked about, Patricia Gibbons or, you know, Jane Casey , we all grew up in the 80s and that was a very scary time to be a woman in Ireland with the Catholic church ruling the rest of the world.”

There was one event in Liz’s youth that deeply affected her and influenced her as a writer. It is a story that the people of Granard know all too well, the tragic death of Ann Lovett.

“She was the exact same age as me. And that really affected me.

“I was stunned because I was 14 as well, and I didn’t know anything about pregnancy. I didn’t know how you got pregnant. I just knew that this was this shameful thing had been done and this girl died giving birth. Horrific.

“And then the Joanne Hayes case, the Kerry Babies, where she was dragged in front of a huge panel of, I think, 25 men and questioned about the most intimate details of her life.”

“There were injustices, which weren't, there were massive injustices against women, which weren't seen as crimes.

“Like, men and the church got away with so much. You know, when you think that rape within marriage was not a crime, you know, so all of these things, you know, that homosexuality was illegal, abortion was illegal, contraception was illegal. So if you were in a bad marriage, you couldn't get out of it.

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“And you, you know, if you were gay, you had to get married. And once you were married, you were stuck. Like, you couldn't leave your marriage.”

These tragedies and the society that allowed then to happen seep into Liz’s writing, all of her novels touch on the issues that

Irelands history presents in the modern world.

“In all of my books, In Sally Diamond, the most recent one I look at psychiatry in Ireland, where the leading psychiatrist was a man and therefore what he said goes.”

In her book Lying in Wait Liz discusses the horrors of the mother and baby homes. In another she discusses abortion.

“I can find a way to shoehorn all of these social issues in, although I’m not actually deliberatley doing it.

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“They just find their way in.”

Liz’s work has won and been short listed for multiple awards, according to the novelist she was quite surprised, her family more so than her.

“I remember at my first book launch I overheard her [Her Mother] talking to my editor and she said “We always thought Liz was a complete loser we had no idea she could do this.”

“You see, I was a real messer in school.

“I had a trail worn to the headmistresses office.

“I didn’t properly grow up until I was in my 30s.”

Liz is absolutely delighted to be a part of this years Granard Booktown Festival, this will be her first time going.

“I’ve never been. I’m being interviewed as far as I know.

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“I’m happy to answer any questions and I’m sure we’ll have a Q&A with the audience. I’m looking forward to interesting questions from people and I’m really an ask me anything kind of person.

“If I could spend my time going around and doing book festivals and never writing another word, I’d be delighted.

“Unfortunately it doesn’t pay that well but I’d love to not have to write.”

While she’d much prefer to attend festivals Liz is working on her sixth book.

“It’s going to be out in March of next year, 2026 and it’s about two sisters who grew up in Boston, one of them is involved in an incident that will change their lives forever.”

Anyone interested can catch Liz on Sunday, April 13 at 5pm in Granard Library. Tickets are €10 and available on the Granard Booktown Festival website.