Jan Carson on identity, Northern Ireland and her new novel, The Fire Starters

A pre-eminent sports journalist who strove for perfection and was dedicated to the facts

Melissa Martinez Garcia (34) was seized in August for ransom by group of armed men

Fear of being found out is the big grey elephant in the room for many managers

Conventional success story hides atrocities and suffering of ordinary Irish-Argentines

Pope’s remarks come as country prepares to receive 7,000 ex-Farc fighters into society

The actor’s role in ‘Danse, Morob’, a play that touches on the dirty protests of the Maze and other traumas, explores how revolution can break those whom others see as heroes

Virginia Reeves’s Man Booker-longlisted debut is eloquently written but on the dull side

The late leader brought great social advances to Cuba, but with these came repression

Nobel Peace Prize comes just days after country voted against Farc peace deal

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the auction house . . . A first edition of Jaws and a drawing by its author are snapped up

How a retired book-collecting Sligo GP managed to get a copy of DH Lawrence’s banned book while still at school

The deal brings peace tantalisingly close after more than 50 years of conflict

‘San Jose’ wreck, with up to $17bn in cargo, claimed by Colombia, Spain and salvage firm

Author from Equatorial Guinea on what he reads and how he writes

This collection of speeches offers marvels of infectious charm and humanity, of a piece with the fiction, and equally haunting

Passionate, relentlessly energetic and possessing a collegial focus: ahead of the announcement of the inaugural laureate in The Irish Times, the selection panel discuss what they are looking for

There is something pleasingly arbitrary about the subscription approach to literature in translation

Nigeria, with its tradition of exuberant storytelling, is central to the writer’s identity. He’s alarmed by the Boko Haram abductions there – part of a series of events that could, he says, trigger something terrible

With the Ballymaloe Literary Festival taking place this weekend, here are 20 literary quotations to whet the appetite

Behind almost everything in MacLeod’s stories is the great wrenching of the Highland Clearances, the sense of a people violently uprooted from its land and flung down on the other side of the great ocean

The fearless beauty of his poetry shone out of every aspect of the National Concert Hall celebration

Colombian author remembered at colourful ceremony in Mexico City

García Márquez emulated his grandmother’s storytelling ways

Gabriel García Márquez: March 6th, 1927 – April 17th, 2014

‘Gabo’, Colombian author of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, dies in Mexico

Adapted from the children’s book by Michael Morpurgo, ‘War Horse’ is currently showing in Dublin’s Bord Gais Energy Theatre. Here are 10 of our favourite literary quotes inspired by animals

These are some of our favourite opening lines - could you write one of your own? Post it in the comment box below. We might even find a suitable prize for the best or funniest

‘Visitant’, a work by composer Trevor Knight, visual artist Alice Maher, Butoh dancer Gyohei Zaitsu and musician Áine O’Dwyer, is more than the sum of its parts