Episode 69: Featured Event with Colm Tóibín and Garth Risk Hallberg Artwork

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The Watchung Booksellers Podcast

Episode 69: Featured Event with Colm Tóibín and Garth Risk Hallberg

June 02, 2026 • Kathryn Counsell • Season 4 • Episode 69

0:00 | 59:15

In this episode, we feature an event with Colm Tóibín in conversation with Garth Risk Hallberg, held at the Montclair Literary Festival for the launch of Toibin's latest book, The News from Dublin.

Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island, an Oprah’s Book Club Pick; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; and Nora Webster, winner of the Hawthornden Prize, as well as three story collections and several books of criticism. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and was named the 2022–2024 Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature.

Garth Risk Hallberg's first novel, City on Fire, was a New York Times and international bestseller and was selected as one of the best books of 2015 by The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Vogue. It was the basis for the Apple TV+ series of the same name. His second novel, The Second Coming, about a troubled teen whose father is a recovering addict, was released in 2024 and is in paperback now. He is also the author of the novella A Field Guide to the North American Family. In 2017, Granta named him one of the Best of Young American Novelists. His work has been translated into seventeen languages.

Resources:

Seamus Heaney 1995 Nobel Prize Speech ( Poetry in Conflict quote)

Thomas Mann’s Brother Hitler Essay

Books:
A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available here.

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The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Watchung Booksellers in Montclair, NJ.

The show is edited by Kathryn Counsell.

Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica. Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff.

Thanks to all the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids’ Room!

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