Colin Walsh’s debut novel Kala rapidly became a word-of-mouth bestseller. It won the Irish Book Award for Newcomer of the Year and the Nota Bene Prize, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and book of the year for the Guardian, GQ Magazine, and Dua Lipa’s Service95 Book Club, amongst others, and was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction and the John McGahern Book Prize. Kala was added to the English Literature A-level curriculum in 2025. Walsh’s short stories have received several awards, including the Hennessy Literary Award and the RTE Francis MacManus Short Story Prize. His work has been published in The Stinging Fly and Winter Papers, broadcast on RTE Radio 1 and BBC Radio 4, and translated into a dozen languages. He grew up in Galway, on Ireland’s west coast.
