Scribendi: Portraits of Irish Writers 1985-2025

Featuring over 100 captivating portraits of many of Ireland’s greatest contemporary writers, alongside conversations with each on their writing life, Scribendi is a landmark book of portraits of Irish writers by internationally renowned photographer 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 forty 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.’