One City One Book | Cathair Amháin Leabhar Amháin

Cork City Libraries’ One City One Book is an initiative to get book loving Corkonians to read and discuss the same book. Individuals, groups, book clubs, workplaces and organisations are encouraged to take part in building a sense of community throughout the city, promoting literacy, supporting the arts and encouraging everyone to engage in reading. It takes the idea of a localised book discussion club and expands it to cover the whole city. In partnership with Waterstones Cork. Funded by Creative Ireland.

This year’s book is Liberty Terrace by Madeleine D'Arcy.

Madeleine D’Arcy is a fiction writer based in Cork City, Ireland.

Her début short story collection, ’Waiting for the Bullet’ (Doire Press, 2014), won the Edge Hill Readers’ Choice Prize 2015 (UK).  Her second collection of linked short fiction, Liberty Terrace (Doire Press, 2021), won a FAPA President’s Prize 2022 (US).

Madeleine is also a recipient of the Hennessy Literary Award for First Fiction and the overall Hennessy Literary Award for New Irish Writer, as well as a number of other awards.

She has read and participated at many literary events and has held residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and Heinrich Böll Cottage. In 2021 she was appointed to the Arts Council of Ireland Peer Panel.

From 2017 to 2022 she co-curated Fiction at the Friary, a free monthly fiction event in Cork City, with fellow-writer Danielle McLaughlin. She is a qualified solicitor and holds an MA in Creative Writing (1.1., UCC, 2014). She has completed a novel and is working on her fourth book.

Previous One City One Book choices include:

Pancho and Lefty Ride Again by Cónal Creedon (2022)

The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin (2021)

Whatever It Takes by Tadgh Coakley (2020)

Darkest Truth by Catherine Kirwan (2019)

Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyuan Li (2018)

The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind by Billy O’Callaghan (2017)

An Only Child by Frank O’Connor (2016)