TypeFace | The Writers Portrait Project

TypeFace is a portrait project where I am asking authors, poets and playwrights to allow me to take a classic black and white portrait of them, and I am also asking them to nominate a piece of their writing to overlay onto the image.

The basis of the idea is that, unlike actors, musicians and comedians, writers shouldn’t need to project a personality in their portraits, their words should reflect their personality instead.

Each portrait is shot with the same background, the same lighting, the same lens and edited in the same way to create a uniform body of work, and I have photographed over 80 writers and poets as of June 2026.

Each passage chosen by the writer will have a significance and a story behind it, and eventually, I plan to have an exhibition of large format prints of the images and an accompanying book with the images and the written work.

There is no charge for taking part and I will give each participant a colour and a b&w digital image for their own promotional use. 

Contact me on 086 806 4613 or at dermot.photo@gmail.com for more information or to book a session.

Louise O'Neill - Author

"I wrote the article for the Irish Examiner in the days following Ashling Murphy’s murder, trying to channel the grief, fury, and helplessness that so many of us felt into something that would ask deeper. I wanted to interrogate the cultural conditions that make violence against women feel so inevitable, and to expose how deeply embedded the fear of male violence is in women’s everyday lives."

David Mitchell - Author

'These are two micro-chapters begin a tale in my new book.  The first describes one of those dreams that starts off feeling real but then feeds clues about its true status as Not Real, or surreal, or alternatively real.  The second joins the dreamer, waking in a hospice bed.  I've always had a fondness for that twilit state between sleeping and waking.  These excerpts bridge that state.'

Danielle McLaughlin - Author

I chose that extract for its setting, which is inspired by my own home and garden in winter (though I do not, sadly, have a fish pond!) and by the stretch of road that leads from my home to Cork city. It's a stretch of road by a river that is incredibly beautiful when everything freezes over. It's also quite a scary road to drive when that happens, and so there's a sense sometimes of being isolated, trapped, a hint of threat running alongside the beauty of nature. The river in the story is the Shournagh River that runs through Donoughmore towards Blarney.

Dean Browne - Poet

Here is the first poem from the book "Aide-Mémoire"

Abi Daré - Author

This is a piece I wrote for Sunday Miscellany for the Ennis Book Club Festival 2026 titled "These Days"

Patrick Holloway - Author

I have found it almost impossible to write directly about the scale of the horror unfolding in Gaza — a violence so overwhelming it resists language.

Instead, this piece turns to something small: a spider, a moment of hesitation, the simple choice of whether or not to flush. In that quiet, domestic space, I found a way to approach what felt otherwise unapproachable.

This small story became a response—an attempt to understand, to sit with discomfort, to examine my own impulses, and to grieve. It does not try to explain or resolve anything; rather, it reflects the limits of comprehension, and the ways in which we reach, however inadequately, toward meaning in the face of devastation.

Catherine Ryan Howard - Author

It's the opening scene to my debut novel Distress Signals (2016) and I chose them because they're the words that started everything. They started my first novel but also got me my agent, first book deal, etc. and when it came time to do events, it was always those words I read aloud. 

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Cork World Book Fest Opening Night

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Cork World Book Fest Exhibition in Cork City Library