Fionola Meredith and Olivia Fitzsimons in conversation with Nuala McKeever

The Stamp of Beauty is Fionola Meredith’s debut novel. Fionola is a writer, broadcaster and commentator, based in Belfast. She is a long- established contributor to the Irish Times and to BBC Northern Ireland, and writes a weekly opinion column in the Belfast Telegraph.

Set in modern-day Ireland, The Stamp of Beauty is an unsettling novel that charts the course of an unlikely and deeply dysfunctional ‘age-gap’ relationship to its inevitable conclusion.

The Quiet Whispers Never Stop is Olivia Fitzsimons' debut novel and was shortlisted for the 2022 Butler Literary Award. The book is set in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s, and is a story of love, obsession and escape, an uncompromising, lyrical tour-de- force that marks the arrival of an extraordinary new voice in Irish fiction.

Olivia's writing has appeared in numerous publications including The Irish Times, The Stinging Fly, Banshee, and broadcast on BBC Radio 4.