Sally Rooney and John Patrick McHugh in Conversation

Join Sally Rooney and John Patrick McHugh in conversation as they explore the tensions that drive their fiction—the quiet, unspoken moments between people, the contradictions of love and intimacy, and the ways place and memory shape their characters.

Sally Rooney, one of the most defining voices in contemporary literature, is known for her precise, emotionally charged prose and her ability to capture the push and pull of modern relationships.

From Conversations with Friends to last year’s Intermezzo, her novels trace the fault lines between intellect and feeling, between self-sufficiency and the longing to be understood. Her characters orbit one another—drawn in, repelled, circling back—while Rooney’s cool, meticulous narration lays bare their inner lives with an almost surgical clarity. Here, she discusses her latest work, one that deepens her ongoing exploration of power, desire, and the fragile intimacies that define us.

John Patrick McHugh, hailed for his evocative and deeply atmospheric storytelling, writes with a lyricism that feels both raw and restrained. His debut short story collection, Pure Gold, captures the restlessness of small-town Irish life—young men and women trapped between longing and inertia, searching for meaning in places that seem to resist it. His debut novel Fun and Games builds on these themes, turning its gaze towards the fluidity of memory, the weight of the past, and the complicated ways people hurt and need each other.