Speaking with Evie Gaughan, or Evie Woods, as you may know her, feels a little like stepping briefly into one of her novels. It might be the way she speaks about books not simply as things written, but as stories told. Or perhaps it’s the worlds she creates: taking places that seem familiar and letting folklore guide her pen to make the ordinary feel that bit more enchanted. Check out our conversation below...
Though Evie may feel like a ‘new’ voice to some readers, her journey has been anything but overnight. Before the breakout popularity of The Lost Bookshop in 2023, she spent more than 10 years refining her craft and finding her voice.
When The Lost Bookshop gained momentum through word-of-mouth recommendations to land on bestseller lists like the Sunday Times and Wall Street Journal, it transformed her career. Its success led to a four-book deal with One More Chapter, the HarperCollins imprint, who are now republishing her earlier novels for a wider audience.
Her latest novel, The Violin Maker's Secret, released in February 2026, continues her signature blend of folklore, history, dual timelines and magical realism, though it actually took inspiration from an idea with a dark source - If an instrument could speak, what stories would it tell?
At the heart of that idea lies an eerie piece of traditional folklore: an old ballad about two sisters, jealousy, betrayal, and transformation. In some versions of the tale, the murdered sister’s body is turned into a violin, her voice living on through music. Evie recalls hearing the ballad that stayed with her, quietly influencing her creative process. “I just thought it was so interesting, the idea of a woman’s voice being in a violin,” she says.
In Evie’s hands, these fragments of folklore become something entirely her own. Rather than simply retelling old myths, she reshapes them into contemporary stories that feel timeless. “I love drawing from Irish folklore,” she explains. “It’s a part of us.” Sharing that for her, her work is, “just another way of reinterpreting it for another generation.”
Though her stories travel beyond Ireland, they always seem to circle back to the west of Ireland, and Galway in particular, as a creative source. “It always sort of comes back to growing up in Galway,” she shares. “It’s just such an arty town. Macnas, the Arts Festival, and all that kind of stuff, really fed into a kind of magic, and I think that’s where I picked it up from.”
Despite her growing international readership, Evie remains surprisingly under the radar in Ireland, it’s something she speaks about with a mixture of curiosity and acceptance. “I didn’t get into this for recognition,” she says. “I just want as many people as possible to read my books, and I want my stories to be the best that they can possibly be.”
Readers around the world continue to discover her novels through libraries, bookshops, and recommendations passed between friends. The messages she receives from readers, she says, remain the most meaningful part of her success. “I was not prepared for the amount of emails that I would receive from all over the world with people telling me the life situation they were in when they were reading my book, how they came across the book, what it had meant to them… I will never get over that,” she says, sounding slightly awestruck.
For Evie, each new book is both a continuation and a fresh beginning, approached with curiosity and care. Even now, she is revisiting her earliest work, rewriting and reshaping it with the skills she has honed over the years. It’s a rare opportunity for any writer: to look back at the beginning and see not only how far you’ve come, but how much more you can bring to a story because for Evie Woods, storytelling is more than about creating worlds, but also connecting them.
Hewn by a master and passed down through generations, one violin charts its own course through history… ‘The Violin Maker’s Secret’ by Evie Woods was released in February 2026, to critical acclaim, quickly becoming a Sunday Times bestseller. Buy your copy now from Kennys Bookshop, Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, or any other major bookstore.
For more on Evie Woods and her novels, visit eviewoods.com. You can also follow her work on Instagram @eviewoods.author.
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