An Irish Matchmaking Festival, Some Magic, and a Rom-Com | Kat Mackenzie
August 25, 2026
Featured Guests:
Kat Mackenzie
Kat Mackenzie is a travel rom-com author published by Avon. A Cajun writer based in rural Louisiana, she shares her home with six rescue dogs and a soft spot for any animal that needs saving. Kat spent about a decade living in the UK, including a stretch in Galway, and draws on her real travels to write romances rooted in the places she's actually been. Her latest, Experiments in Offline Dating, is set around a real Irish matchmaking festival in County Clare. When she's not writing, she's reading, traveling, or hunting for the perfect insult.
This week we're joined by travel rom-com author Kat Mackenzie to talk about her latest release, Experiments in Offline Dating (Avon), out today. Set in County Clare, Ireland, the book is built around a real-life Irish matchmaking festival, and Kat did the research the only way she knows how: she went. She lived in Galway, traveled all over Ireland, went to the actual festival in Lisdoonvarna, and signed up with a real third-generation matchmaker, Willie Daly, complete with his generations-old leather-bound book of dating magic.
We get into all of it: why every pub, shop, and plate of fish and chips in the book is a place Kat has actually been, how she nailed the Irish dialect, her Cajun life in Louisiana with six rescue dogs, and the baby lamb author photo she refuses to give up. Then the conversation turns to the honest stuff, Kat's winding path from indie to a trad deal with Avon, why traditional publishing keeps so many secrets, and the real differences between going indie and going trad.
Also, Kat believes her true literary legacy is the perfectly crafted insult. After this episode, we're inclined to agree.
Plus: our brand-new segment, The Book Break, kicks off with Liar Liar by Lucy Lee, a steamy fake-dating rom-com you'll want on your TBR.
Pour a margarita or a Guinness and settle in.
In This Episode
Six rescue dogs, wildlife rehab, and the baby lamb that started it all
The real Irish matchmaking festival in County Clare
Meeting world-famous matchmaker Willie Daly
Writing authentic Irish dialect (and one very memorable curse word)
The art of the insult
Kat's journey from indie to a trad deal with Avon
Trad vs indie publishing: control, transparency, and why trad keeps secrets
Experiments in Offline Dating
Kat Mackenzie
In Experiments in Offline Dating, podcaster Maya Davis is chronically, catastrophically bad at dating. So bad, in fact, that she's turned her disastrous love life into a full-time job as cohost of a podcast about offline dating. For her second season, Maya flies to Ireland to meet a world-renowned local matchmaker and go all in at the town's annual matchmaking festival, hoping to gather comedy gold and maybe, finally, figure out how love works.
What she gets instead is a road trip across the Irish countryside with Tadhg, an outrageously grumpy sheep farmer who happens to be the worst blind date of her life. As the two spar their way past green hills and picturesque villages, all that bickering starts to feel a lot like chemistry, and Maya begins to wonder if she's not so hopeless at love after all.
It's an enemies-to-lovers, grumpy-sunshine, forced-proximity travel rom-com brimming with humor and heart. And as you'll hear in the episode, every festival, farm, and plate of fish and chips is drawn from Kat's own real travels through Ireland. Out now from Avon.
