Tanya Sweeney: When I was 10 years old, living in the west Dublin suburbs, reading Smash Hits felt being granted membership to a cool clubhouse

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of meeting a fellow author who, like me, was releasing her own debut novel. I, along with Alex Kadis, who has written the effervescent and moving novel Big Nobody, ended up together on the Book Off podcast, pitting our two favourite books against each other (mine was High Fidelity, and hers was Olga Dies Dreaming).