Celebrated crime writer to appear at Waterford library

Ms Carter will join Waterford City and County Librarian, Mary Conway, for the fifth Writers at Waterford Libraries event of 2025 in Lismore Library on June 18 at 3pm to discuss her latest book, There Came a Tapping and writing life.
The successful author grew up in Ballyfin in Co Laois, studied law at Trinity College Dublin, and worked as a solicitor on the Inishowen Peninsula in Co Donegal, where she ran the most northerly solicitor's practice in the country.
Having practised law for 20 years, more recently as a barrister, Ms Carter now writes full time.
Her first book, Death at Whitewater Church, a winner of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair, was followed by Treacherous Strand, The Well of Ice, Murder at Greysbridge, and The Body Falls.
She has been the recipient of two Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursary Awards and a Dublin City Council Bursary Award.
Her short story The Lamb was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards in 2019. The Inishowen Mysteries series is in development for television, while her first standalone thriller There Came a Tapping was published earlier this year in March 2025.
This event is free to attend, however booking is essential.
To book your seat for the event contact Lismore Library on 058 21377.

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• The Journal

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Irish Examiner

09-06-2025

• Irish Examiner

Children are being re-traumatised as abusers weaponise the courts system

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• RTÉ News​

Support, don't star: rethinking the Arts Council's role

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While additional capacity at the Arts Council may have been necessary, the lack of parallel investment in their clients has created a gulf between the people who produce art and the agency that manages the funding. No theatre has doubled its staff. No plays have doubled its cast. Over 800 artists signed an open letter calling for emergency investment in the sector which was delivered in December 2024. The feeling was widespread: theatre in Ireland is struggling, not because there's no funding, but because of how it's being distributed. The problem is not about people. It's about systems. The Arts Council is a public body with a wide remit, serving everything from festivals to literature, music, venues, visual art, as well as the more nebulous idea of 'promoting the arts in Ireland'. But its most essential function - getting funding to artists and the people who connect art with the public - is not working. If the Arts Council were truly attuned to the interests of artists, it would see the current delays in funding decisions as an organisational crisis. Radical measures would be considered - like redeploying staff or drastically simplifying processes - to get investment to artists in time. If it were more attuned to artists' interests, the fact that only 15% of eligible theatre applications are funded wouldn't be brushed off as "the competitive context." It would be treated as an emergency. The next Director should make the Arts Council a supporting character - one that enables, rather than directs. If it were aligned with artists' interests', the Council's budget submission to Government would not be built around what it thinks it can get, or what looks tidy on paper, but on the real cost of funding all the applications it has already judged to be worthy. They would base it on the real demand, no matter how big that number is. These are questions I've been asking, along with many others, not out of hostility, but out of necessity. These failures are not moral ones. They are systemic. Systems respond to power and, as it stands, the Arts Council responds most clearly to the pressures it is most exposed to - be they departmental, political, or bureaucratic. The artist's voice is still too faint in that chorus. That's why I've been part of a group that formed the Theatre Artists Assembly - an attempt to give the arts practitioners a unified, democratic voice. Not to shout louder, but to speak more clearly and together about what we need to do our work. I would like to see assemblies like this being integrated into Arts Council decision-making processes. I would like to see artist and practitioner-led groups taking power and responsibility over the decisions that affect them. Yes, even the difficult and unpopular decisions. We have seen in citizens' assemblies how groups of people can come together and, when provided with the facts, expertise, and time to digest them and come to a conclusion, they do so with remarkable civility and clarity. I think this could be an experiment in co-creation of state policy. This could be a way of making institutions work in ways that reflect the interests of its stakeholders. It could be something we so acutely need; a form of democracy that happens between elections. This approach could strengthen and renew the principle of the Arts Council's 'arms-length' from Government. This is the principle, established in the Arts Art, that keeps decisions about what kind of art to produce and who to fund to do it, out of the realm of party politics. This could be a way of affirming that distance from the political system, while establishing community-voice and democratic responsibility. The next Director should make the Arts Council a supporting character - one that enables, rather than directs. They should build models for democratic decision-making - not merely "consultation" but real decision-making power. It will take a deft leader to resist the urge to fix everything from within, and instead recognise that real leadership often means creating space for others to shape the path. In short, they should lead by following.