Killybegs author Alan Murrin named as an Irish writers to look out for in 2024

A Killybegs author has been listed as one to watch this year.

Alan Murrin has been included by The Irish Times as one of the ‘Irish debut writers to look out for in 2024’.

Murrin now lives in Berlin and is a graduate of the MA in prose fiction from the University of East Anglia.

His debut novel, The Coast Road, is due for release in May. The Coast Road is set in County Donegal and tells the story of two women in a closed community in 1994 - the year before divorce became legal in Ireland.

The book examines the limits on women’s lives.Colette Crowley, the bohemian writer who left her husband and sons, enlists the help of a housewife named Izzy in attempt to reconcile with her children, and the two women forge a friendship that will send them on a spiralling journey – one toward a path of self-discovery, and the other toward tragedy.

“One of the things I was interested in exploring was this idea of being in a relationship that you just have to make work,” Murrin told The Irish Times.

“There was no escape. You had no other option. If you made a bad match, that was a tragedy that marred your life because there was no other way around that. I was interested in that as a layer of tension and difficulty these characters operate around.”

Murrin’s fiction work has won or been listed for several awards.

He is a son of the late Joey Murrin, the former fishing industry leader who died in 2018. He retired in 2000 as chief executive of the Killybegs Fishermen’s Organisation having spent almost three decades serving in Irish and international fishing politics.