Roisín O’Donnell is an award-winning Irish author. Her short story collection, WILD QUIET, was published in 2016 and was shortlisted for the Kate O’Brien Award and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. Her short stories have been published in The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times and many other places, and have featured on RTÉ Radio. She won the An Post Irish Book Award for Short Story of the Year in 2018, and was shortlisted for the same prize in 2022.

Her first novel, NESTING, became an instant Sunday Times bestseller and was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Roisin was listed as one of the Observer’s Ten Best New Novelists of 2025. Donal Ryan described NESTING as "one of the best and most important novels of our time," while the Irish Independent declared it "A novel that truly matters." Nesting won the An Post Irish Book Award for Novel of the Year 2025.

Books by Roisín O'Donnell

Nesting

by Roisín O'Donnell - Fiction

Grabbing an armful of clothes off the clothesline, Ciara Fay straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. All she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe. On the surface, she has a perfect life. Her husband, Ryan, is a good provider, and they have another baby on the way. But he also monitors Ciara's every move, flies into unpredictable rages where he convinces her she can do nothing right, and has isolated her from work, friends and her beloved family. With no job and no support, Ciara struggles to provide a sense of normalcy for her little girls. Facing a broken housing system, they move into a hotel room on a floor reserved for women like her. Ryan, meanwhile, wages a relentless campaign to win her back, and Ciara wavers. He never hit her, after all. And don't the girls need a stable home?