• Selection process led by Colm Tóibín
• Award comprises a year-long residency in Dublin City centre and a stipend making it is one of the most valuable literary awards in Ireland

Acclaimed Irish writer Patrick McCabe (b.1955) has been announced as the 2026 IPUT Writer-in-Residence at Wilton Park as selected by a committee chaired by Colm Tóibín.

Located in an elegant refurbished Georgian apartment at Wilton Park, the residency is in an area with rich literary connections, known as Baggotonia. The apartment includes a writer’s study and has views across the park to the Grand Canal, taking in the well-known statue of Patrick Kavanagh. It is adjacent to Mary Lavin Place, the first public square named in honour of an Irish woman writer.

A novelist and playwright, Patrick McCabe has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His novels Breakfast on Pluto and The Butcher Boy were both made into films directed by Neil Jordan. In September, Picador will publish his novels Poguemahone and Goldengrove in paperback.

Following in the footsteps of Patrick Kavanagh, fellow Monaghan native, Patrick McCabe has moved to Dublin to take up his Residency this month. In 2025, the inaugural Residency was awarded to Naoise Dolan, giving her the chance to return to live in her home city for the first time since graduating from Trinity College in 2016.

The IPUT Writer-in-Residence includes a generous stipend making it one of the most valuable literary awards in Ireland. It is given on an annual basis to a published writer, enabling them to live and make work in Dublin, and contribute to the life of the city, a UNESCO World City of Literature. The Residency is selected by a committee chaired by Colm Tóibín, including publicist Cormac Kinsella and members of IPUT.

According to Niall Gaffney, CEO of IPUT Real Estate:

We are delighted to announce Patrick McCabe as our second Writer-in-Residence. As an avid reader of his novels, I am curious to see how the neighbourhood of Wilton Park and Mary Lavin Place may inspire his work in the future. We created the residency because we believe that cities are only great when there is space for arts and culture to thrive, and we have been proud to host events with our inaugural Resident, Naoise Dolan, at both the International Literary Festival Dublin and the Dublin Book Festival. I look forward with great anticipation to see what Patrick may do in the coming year.

According to Colm Tóibín:

The apartment in Wilton Place that IPUT has created for a writer is a beautiful and inspiring space in an area of Dublin that has a rich literary history. IPUT and Niall Gaffney deserve great credit for their generosity and vision, for seeing their opportunity and knowing how much it will mean for writers. It is marvellous, then, that a writer as beloved as Patrick McCabe, a writer who has transformed our literary landscape, is going to live in the apartment and add lustre to this historic part of Dublin.

According to Patrick McCabe:

This remarkable residency will mark for me a return to a part of the city of Dublin with which I am well acquainted – having completed the greater part of my novel The Dead School there, many moons ago. From both my native Monaghan and Dublin, I am well aware of the spectral presences of Patrick Kavanagh, and of Mary Lavin, for I too once haunted the shelves of Parson’s legendary bookshop. It’s a great part of the city, and I cannot wait to encounter its drifting, immortal literary spirits.

Reflecting on her residency last year, Naoise Dolan said:

Being back in Dublin let me physically participate in the Irish literary community in a way I’ve never been able to before, from festivals to local bookshop events; I’d left Ireland before I began writing professionally, so my presence has been largely remote until now. I’ve also expanded my Irish-language writing practice considerably in a way that would have been very difficult to accomplish outside Ireland. I’d kept a diary in Irish for years, but this year I wrote and read aloud an essay for Radió na Gaeltachta, performed poetry at a REIC event, and read new Irish-language work at a MOLI event organised by the LGBT+ collective Aerach Aisteach Gaelach.