Jan Carson & Sarah Moss in Conversation with Olivia Fitzsimons

Mermaid Arts Centre is delighted to partner with Bridge Street Books to bring an exciting evening of literature to the Assembly Hall, Wicklow Town with renowned authors Jan Carson and Sarah Moss facilitated by Wicklow author Olivia Fitzsimons.

Jan Carson

Jan Carson is a Belfast based writer who has published four novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland, 2019. The Raptures was shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her writing has aired on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and RTE and has been translated into twenty languages worldwide.

Jan was the Seamus Heaney Centre Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast in 2025 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her latest novel, Few and Far Between was published in April 2026.

Sarah Moss

Sarah Moss writes novels, memoir, essays and literary journalism. Her books include Ghost Wall, Summerwater, and most recently Ripeness and My Good Bright Wolf, which won Saltire Scottish Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2025. Summerwater was adapted for TV and shown on Channel 4 in November 2025. She has been nominated for prizes including the Women’s Prize, the Wellcome Prize, the Polari Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize, and was made Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2019. Sarah has a BA, M.St. and D.Phil from Oxford University and has taught and directed Creative Writing MA and MFA programmes at the universities of Exeter, Iceland, Warwick and University College Dublin. She designed and teaches Granta’s Advanced Fiction course. Born in Scotland, she grew up in northern England and after moving around Britain and Europe, is now settled in Dublin.

Olivia Fitzsimons

Olivia Fitzsimons is a writer from Northern Ireland. Her debut novel, The Quiet Whispers Never Stop (2022), was shortlisted for the Kate O'Brien and Butler Literary Awards, and was one of the Irish Examiner Books of the Year for 2022. She is a contributing editor at The Stinging Fly and commissions This So-Called Writing Life essay series. Her short stories have been placed or shortlisted in many competitions including the Sunday Business Post/Penguin Short Story Prize, The Benedict Kiely Short Story Award and Dalkey.