DCU Book Club with Wendy Erskine

The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine is DCU Book Club's featured book in February 2026. Allen joins us as special guest for an 'in conversation with' event at Belvedere Library, Belvedere House, St. Patrick’s campus.

The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine

In The Benefactors, we meet Frankie, Miriam, and Bronagh - very different women but all mothers to 18-year-old boys. They do not know each other yet, but when their sons are accused of sexually assaulting Misty Johnston, whose family lacks the wealth and social standing of their own, they'll leverage all the power of their position to protect their children.

From the prize-winning author of Dance Move and Sweet Home, this is an astounding novel about intimate histories, class, money, and what being a parent means. Brutal, tender, and rigorously intelligent, The Benefactors is a daring, polyphonic presentation of modern-day Northern Ireland. It is also very funny.

About the Author

Wendy Erskine's debut novel The Benefactors is published by Sceptre and her two short story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move, are published by The Stinging Fly Press and Picador. She was chosen by the Observer as a Best Debut Novelist of 2025 and has been listed for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award and the Edge Hill Prize. She was awarded the Butler Prize for Literature and the Edge Hill Readers’ Prize. Dance Move was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. Her writing on arts of all kinds, from sculpture to body-building, has been published in the Guardian and the Quietus among others, and for PVA Books she edited well I just kind of like it, an anthology about art in the home and the home as art. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is a frequent broadcaster, interviewer and willing collaborator on all manner of projects. She is also a secondary school teacher in Belfast.

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