Poets Thomas McCarthy and Molly Twomey in Conversation – Central Library – Friday 24th October
As part of this year’s exciting Waterford Writers Weekend programme, two of Waterford’s best loved poets Cappoquin’s Thomas McCarthy and Lismore’s Molly Twomey will be in conversation with City & County Librarian, Mary Conway about their writing lives from different generational ends of the spectrum. Both poets have released new poetry collections in 2025 and the twist is that each will be reading from the others works and speaking about their choices.
Venue: Central Library, Lady Lane, Waterford City.
Date: Friday 24th October 2025
Time: 6:00pm
This is a free event, but booking is essential. Please contact Central Library on 051 849975 for bookings and information.
Thomas McCarthy was born in Cappoquin, Co. Waterford, and educated at University College Cork. He worked at Cork City Libraries for over thirty years and has held international fellowships, including as a Fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa (1978–79) and Professor of English at Macalester College, Minnesota (1994–95). He is the author of numerous poetry collections, most recently Plenitude (2025). His many awards include the Patrick Kavanagh Award, the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize, the O’Shaughnessy Prize, and the Annual Literary Award of The Ireland Funds. A former Editor of The Cork Review and Poetry Ireland Review, he is a member of Aosdána. McCarthy’s work has been widely translated, notably into Italian, Romanian, Russian and Chinese, and continues to resonate with readers around the world.
Molly Twomey grew up in Lismore, County Waterford, and now lives in Cork. She holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from University College Cork and earned First Class Honours.
Her first collection, Raised Among Vultures, was published in 2022 by The Gallery Press. It was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, and won the Southword Debut Collection Poetry Award. Her second collection, Chic to be Sad, came out in July 2025.
Molly has received support via bursaries and arts-funding: an Arts Council Literature Bursary (2024), and the 2023 Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary among others. Her poetry often explores themes of mental health, recovery, identity, relationships, and the pressures young women face, in settings rooted in the everyday. Her work is known for emotional honesty, vivid detail, and an ability to blend vulnerability with strength. She also hosts the poetry discussion series Just to Say, and her poems appear in outlets like Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, The Irish Times, The Stinging Fly, and others.
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