Mayo author among writing talent in focus in stunning illustrated book

A STUNNING new book, SCRIBENDI - Portraits of Irish Writers 1985 to 2025, sees Steve Pyke celebrating the last 40 years of writing in Ireland.

A must-have for fans of Irish literature, among the writers featured in the book is Mayo's Mike McCormack, whose award-winning work includes the acclaimed Solar Bones.

Scribendi: Irish Writers 1982-2025 (Lilliput Press) represents the culmination of 40 years work photographing Irish writers.

In this beautifully designed hardback, Steve Pyke presents a series of intimate portraits of contemporary writers from Ireland.

Long acclaimed for close-up black-and-white portraits, Pyke expands the process here with vintage colour film - embracing its unpredictability - to illuminate both the sitter and the act of writing. Each portrait is accompanied with a brief text from each writer that explains how, when and from whom writing became an instrumental voice for the authors.

The release of the book coincides with a major exhibition of the images at the Photo Museum Ireland, which runs until November 2.

Said Steve Pyke: “I come from the English midlands, but I became a photographer in Ireland. I made my first portraits in Dublin in the early 1980s. It was immediately apparent to me then how important Irish writers are to their country, in a way I never saw in England or elsewhere.

“One of my earliest portrait sessions was in 1985, with the writer Neil Jordan, in my first studio in London. I’ve gone on for the subsequent 40 years photographing the Irish writers whose books have excited me.

“Early sitters include Seamus Heaney, Edna O’Brien and John McGahern. More recent trips have led me to the next generation, such writers as Anne Enright, Kevin Barry and Louise Kennedy.

“I photographed these people because I had read their books and admired and wanted to meet them, and also to make a record for posterity. Their faces can bring to others something of the feeling and way of thinking behind their words.”