New Writing from Ireland
Literature Ireland Promoting and Translating Irish Writing
Fiction | 1
NEW WRITING FROM IRELAND 2018 Writing from Ireland continues to be a great news story in 2018. Literature Ireland’s 2018/2019 edition of New Writing from Ireland reflects this dynamic and vibrant literary output. Over the past year, Irish writers have had their work celebrated both at home and abroad, with many valuable prizes and important nominations going to Anna Burns, Anne Enright, Paul Lynch Mike McCormack, Lisa McInerney, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Edna O’Brien, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Mark O’Connell, Sally Rooney and Donal Ryan – to name but a few! Irish publishing, too, is displaying a newfound confidence with independents such as Gill Books, Tramp Press, The Stinging Fly Press and Doire Press fostering new talent, taking unexpected and bold publishing decisions and garnering the recognition that both they and their fine writers deserve. Larger and more established Irish publishers are also enjoying significant successes; book sales are up and the future looks better for writers and readers of Irish writing around the world. One particularly exciting development is a new focus on non-fiction from writers such as Emilie Pine and John Connell, with important books appearing on a range of subjects from fertility to farming.
With the help of its funders, Culture Ireland, the Arts Council and Trinity College Dublin, Literature Ireland is proud to promote Irish writing by working closely with a wide network of publishers and translators abroad. Our remit is to support and encourage them to publish the very best of Irish literature in the best possible translations. As we prepare to celebrate our twentyfifth year of activity in 2019, the board and staff of Literature Ireland should like to thank all our friends and business partners across the globe for choosing to translate, publish and promote Irish writing and for their on-going and fruitful relationship with us. To date, Literature Ireland has worked with you to translate almost 2,000 books into fifty-six languages. Without you, our work would be meaningless, and your readers would not enjoy discovering great works of Irish literature in excellent translations in their own languages. We look forward to helping you publish the next 2,000 books of Irish literature in translation! Sinéad Mac Aodha Director, Literature Ireland
Editors: Andrew Deering and Rita McCann Design, typesetting and layout by Language, Dublin www.language.ie Printed by Character, August 2018 ISSN: 1649-959X (Print) ISSN: 2009-7522 (Online)
Fiction | 3
CONTENTS Literature Ireland Translation Grant Programme
4 5
Fiction 6 Poetry 37 Children’s & Young Adult Literature 49 Non-fiction 61 Index of Authors Index of Titles Index of Publishers
70 72 74
4 | Literature Ireland
LITERATURE IRELAND Literature Ireland is the national agency in Ireland for the promotion of Irish literature abroad. The organisation works to build an international awareness and appreciation of contemporary Irish literature, primarily in translation. A not-for-profit organisation, Literature Ireland was established in 1994 and is funded by Culture Ireland and the Arts Council. To date, it has supported the translation of over 1,900 works of Irish literature into 56 languages around the world. Literature Ireland is a proud partner in the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation. Literature Ireland: •
Runs a translation grant programme for international publishers
•
Awards bursaries to literary translators
•
Participates at international book fairs
•
Coordinates the Irish national stand at the London and Frankfurt book fairs
•
Organises author and translator events
•
Facilitates the involvement of Irish authors at select international literature festivals
•
Publishes an annual catalogue, New Writing from Ireland, and other promotional materials
•
Participates in international translation projects
•
Provides information to publishers, translators, authors, diplomats, journalists and other interested parties.
Detailed information on Literature Ireland and its programmes is available online at literatureireland.com. Contact details: Literature Ireland Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation 36 Fenian Street Trinity College Dublin Dublin D02 CH22 Ireland literatureireland.com +353 1 896 4184
Translation Grant Programme Fiction | 5
TRANSLATION GRANT PROGRAMME Translation grants are available to international publishers who are seeking support for translations of Irish literature.* Literature Ireland offers successful applicants a contribution towards the translator’s fee.
Translation Grant Application Checklist
•
The publisher’s contact details
Publishers must apply at least three months before the translation is due to be published. The organisation’s board of directors meets three times a year to consider applications. The deadlines for application are available at literatureireland.com.
•
A copy of the agreement with the translation rights holder
•
A copy of the contract with the translator
•
Publication details: the proposed date of publication, the proposed print run and the page extent of the translation
•
A copy of the translator’s CV
•
A breakdown of the fee to be paid to the translator
ten days of the board meeting.
•
Two copies of the original work
Payment of the translation grant is made to the publisher on receipt of proof of payment to the translator and eight copies of the published work, which must contain an acknowledgement of funding from Literature Ireland.
•
Two copies of a translation sample consisting of 10–12 pages of prose or six poems.
All translation samples are assessed by an independent expert. Successful applicants are sent a formal letter of award and contracts are posted within
Any queries regarding the translation grant programme may be sent to info@literatureireland.com.
Your application should include the following:
* Eligible genres: literary fiction, children’s/ young adult literature, poetry, drama and some literary non-fiction.
6 | Fiction
New Island Books / September 2018
DERMOT BOLGER
AN ARK OF LIGHT When Dermot Bolger published his most acclaimed novel, The Family on Paradise Pier (2005), it was hailed by Sebastian Barry in the Guardian as ‘his finest novel’.
350 pp
Based on true events, this longawaited sequel to The Family on Paradise Pier follows the story of Eva, an Anglo-Irish woman, from 1945, where the last book left off, through to her death in 2000. It takes her from her struggle to find a role in a changing Ireland as a writer and a separated woman to her attempts to protect her son in an era in which homosexuality was outlawed. Set in Morocco, London, Kenya and Ireland, An Ark of Light is a testament to an unbreakable human spirit. One of Ireland’s best-known writers, Dermot Bolger’s fourteen novels include A Second Life, The Journey Home, Tanglewood, The Family on Paradise Pier and The Lonely Sea and Sky. His numerous awards include The Samuel Beckett Award. In 2017, Ireland’s national theatre staged his acclaimed adaption of Joyce’s Ulysses.
Contact for rights negotiations Edwin Higel, 16 Priory Office Park, Stillorgan, Co. Dublin, Ireland newisland.ie / edwin.higel@newisland.ie +49 7221 702 9956
Fiction | 7
Penguin Ireland / April 2019
NIAMH BOYCE
HER KIND
1324, Kilkennie.
320 pp
A woman seeks refuge for herself and her daughter in the household of a childhood friend. The friend, Alice Kytler, gives her sanctuary, a job as a servant and a new name, Petronelle. Rich and powerful, Alice is feted but also envied, especially by Kilkennie’s bishop, Richard Ledrede. Determined that no one, least of all a woman, will defy the church’s power, he turns the people against Alice and her household.
Niamh Boyce was named Newcomer of the Year at the 2013 Irish Book Awards for The Herbalist, her first novel, which was also a number one bestseller. She won the 2012 Hennesssy XO New Irish Writer of The Year Award and Emerging Poetry Award for her poem ‘Kitty’. Her Kind is her second novel.
Now needing to escape Kilkennie, Petronelle confronts forces greater than she could ever have imagined and finds herself fighting for more than her freedom. Inspired by a true story, Her Kind is a tense, moving and atmospheric reimagining of the events leading up to the Kilkenny Witch Trial of 1324.
Contact for rights negotiations Nicola Barr, The Bent Agency, 21 Melliss Avenue, Richmond, TW9 4BQ, UK thebentagency.com / barrqueries@thebentagency.com
8 | Fiction
Transworld / August 2018
JOHN BOYNE
A LADDER TO THE SKY Maurice Paskin has always dreamed of being a great writer. So, when he meets the famous author Erich Ackermann in a Berlin hotel, he sees an opportunity to ingratiate himself with someone who can help him achieve his every desire. As they travel across Europe together, Erich reveals the secrets of his own life, leading Maurice to discover the story he has always wanted to tell.
368 pp
As his career develops, Maurice comes to realise that he doesn’t need talent. He simply needs to connect with the right people and get them to trust him. A plan that works well for decades until he meets someone whose ability to manipulate is equal to his own. John Boyne is the author of ten novels for adults, five for young readers and a collection of short stories. His novels, notably his 2006 multi-award-winning The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, The Absolutist and A History of Loneliness, have been widely praised and are international bestsellers. His novels are published in over 45 languages.
Contact for rights negotiations Laura Bonner, WME Entertainment, 100 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1HB, UK wmeentertainment.com / lbonner@wmeentertainment.com +44 20 8929 8400
Fiction | 9
Cló Iar-Chonnacht / May 2018
PÁDRAIC BREATHNACH
DIALANN MO MHÁTHAR Dialann Mo Mháthar delves into a marital infidelity between a young couple. The story unfolds through the point of view of the couple’s now grown-up daughter, who comes across her mother’s old diary in the attic.
323 pp
This novel was awarded the first prize in the ‘Fiction: Novel’ category in the Oireachtas na Gaeilge annual literary awards.
Pádraic Breathnach is from Moycullen in County Galway. He is best known for his short stories but is also a novelist. Dialann Mo Mháthar is his second novel.
Contact for rights negotiations Micheál Ó Conghaile, Director, Cló IarChonnacht, Inverin, Co. Galway, Ireland cic.ie / moccic@eircom.net +353 91 593 360
10 | Fiction
Faber & Faber / May 2018
ANNA BURNS
MILKMAN
In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes ‘interesting’. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous . . .
368 pp
Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is a story of inaction with enormous consequences.
Anna Burns was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is the author of two novels, No Bones and Little Constructions, and of the novella Mostly Hero. No Bones won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She lives in East Sussex, England.
Contact for rights negotiations Emma Cheshire, Faber & Faber, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3DA, UK faber.co.uk / emma.cheshire@faber.co.uk +44 20 7927 3884
Doubleday / April 2019
Fiction | 11
JAN CARSON
A TASTE FOR FIRE Dr Jonathan Murray is seduced by a patient, and his life is forever changed. She is no ordinary woman, and the baby she bears is no ordinary child. On the rougher side of town, former hard-man Sammy Agnew knows his own violence lurks in his son’s blood.
400 pp
Belfast is seething with menace under a fierce summer sun, and the city is ablaze. Bonfire season is weeks away, but someone has been starting fires early. As the summer burns on, and the lines between fantasy and truth begin to blur, both Jonathan and Sammy will be forced to question everything they thought they knew – about love, about fatherhood and about the lengths they are willing to go to in order to protect their children. Jan Carson’s first novel, Malcolm Orange Disappears, was published in 2014 to critical acclaim, followed by a short collection, Children’s Children (2016), and a flash fiction anthology, Postcard Stories (2017). Among many other successes, she was shortlisted for the Sean O’Faolain International Short Story Prize in 2016 and won the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition in 2016.
Contact for rights negotiations Kate Johnson, Wolf Literary Services LLC, 115 Broadway, Suite 1602, New York, NY 10006, USA wolflit.com / kate@wolflit.com
12 | Fiction
Michael Joseph / July 2018
HELEN CULLEN
THE LOST LETTERS OF WILLIAM WOOLF Lost letters have only one hope for survival . . .
336 pp
Inside the Dead Letters depot in East London, William Woolf is one of thirty letter detectives who spend their days solving mysteries: missing postcodes, illegible handwriting, rain-smudged ink, lost address labels, torn packages, forgotten street names – they are all the culprits of missed birthdays, broken hearts, unheard confessions, pointless accusations, unpaid bills and unanswered prayers.
Helen Cullen is an Irish writer living in London. The Lost Letters of William Woolf is her debut novel.
But when William discovers letters addressed simply to ‘My Great Love’, his work takes on new meaning. Written by a wistful woman to the soulmate she hasn’t met yet, the missives capture William’s heart, and soon he begins to wonder, are these letters truly lost? Or might he be the intended recipient – could he be her great love?
Contact for rights negotiations Ines Cortesao, Penguin Random House UK, 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, UK penguinrandomhouse.co.uk / lcortesao@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk
The Stinging Fly Press / September 2018
Fiction | 13
WENDY ERSKINE
SWEET HOME
219 pp
A lonely woman is fascinated by her new niqab-wearing neighbours; a reclusive cult-rock icon ends his days in the street where he was born; a husband and wife become enmeshed in the lives of the young couple they pay to do their cleaning and gardening. Set in contemporary East Belfast, these acutely observed short stories come charged with regret and sorrow, desire and longing. With cleareyed compassion and wry humour, Wendy Erskine deftly lays bare the struggle to maintain control in an often brutal and unforgiving world.
Wendy Erskine lives in Belfast. Her work has been published in The Stinging Fly, Stinging Fly Stories and Female Lines: New Writing by Women from Northern Ireland (New Island Books) and is forthcoming in Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber and Faber), Winter Papers and on BBC Radio 4. Sweet Home is her first collection.
Contact for rights negotiations Lucy Luck, C+W Agency, 5th Floor, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London, SW1Y 4SP, UK lucy@cwagency.co.uk / cwagency.co.uk +44 20 7393 4221
14 | Fiction
Tramp Press / November 2018
JACK FENNELL (ED.)
A BRILLIANT VOID: A SELECTION OF CLASSIC IRISH SCIENCE FICTION
224 pp
There is such a thing as classic Irish science fiction. Edited and with an introduction by Jack Fennell, A Brilliant Void is a collection of startling, beautiful and weird Irish science fiction stories and extracts from 1813 to 1960.
Dr Jack Fennell is the author of Irish Science Fiction (Liverpool University Press, 2014) and teaches in the School of Culture and Communications, University of Limerick.
Contact for rights negotiations Sarah Davis-Goff, Tramp Press tramppress.com / sarah@tramppress.com
Fiction | 15
Dalkey Archive Press / October 2018
HUGH FULHAM-MCQUILLAN
212 pp
NOTES ON JACKSON AND HIS DEAD
Hugh Fulham-McQuillan is studying for a doctorate in psychology at Trinity College Dublin, having also completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees there. His work has been published, or is forthcoming, in The Stinging Fly, Burning Bush 2, Long Story Short and Word Riot.
In this collection of eighteen stories, Hugh Fulham-McQuillan writes with the playfulness and intelligence of such masters of the short form as Borges, Poe and Barthelme. He examines the aesthetics of murder, the reigning fascination of the macabre in popular culture and the tenuous line that separates art from life. One narrator traces the Möbius strip that encloses the assassination of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar and the murder of Lincoln by a famous actor in a theatre. Another undergoes plastic surgery to accelerate the process of his being possessed by the ghost of the Italian composer Gesualdo. A detective ponders the interest he takes in investigating murders. FulhamMcQuillan wears his learning lightly and writes with the tact of a born storyteller.
Contact for rights negotiations Christopher Deveau, Dalkey Archive Press, Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, 36 Fenian Street, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin D02 CH22, Ireland dalkeyarchive.com / deveau@dalkeyarchive.com
16 | Fiction
New Island Books / May 2018
MIA GALLAGHER
SHIFT
‘This collection is a marvel.’ — Mike McCormack Prowling the streets, bedrooms, parks and schoolyards of a grubby uncertain city, where madness lurks just under the skin, men, women and those inbetween enter an unsettling dance of encounters.
280 pp
There’s Maisie, perfect on the inside and out, a right Primcess™ – but what’s it going to take to get a hard-copy invitation to her party? There’s the angry-deep-inside man, who gets more than he bargained for when he drinks too much at a party, insulting a mysterious guest. And the nixer driving a removals van with Christo, who likes dressing up on days he isn’t feeling too good. Mia Gallagher’s novels are HellFire (Penguin, 2006), awarded the Irish Tatler Literature Award 2007, and Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland (New Island, 2016), longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Award 2016 and due to be published in the UK by Head of Zeus in 2019. Shift is her first short story collection.
A magnificent achievement by one of Ireland’s greatest authors.
Contact for rights negotiations Edwin Higel, 16 Priory Office Park, Stillorgan, Co. Dublin, Ireland newisland.ie / edwin.higel@newisland.ie +49 7221 702 9956
Fiction | 17
The Stinging Fly Press / April 2018
SARAH GILMARTIN AND DECLAN MEADE (EDS.)
379 pp
STINGING FLY STORIES
Sarah Gilmartin is an arts journalist who writes a weekly column on debut fiction for The Irish Times and she also reviews for The Sunday Times, Sunday Business Post and Irish Examiner. Declan Meade is The Stinging Fly magazine’s founding editor and publisher. He also runs the Stinging Fly Press.
The Stinging Fly magazine was established to seek out and publish the very best new Irish and international writing. The first issue came out in March 1998. The magazine has a particular interest in encouraging new writers and in promoting the short story form. Stinging Fly Stories brings together forty stories from the magazine’s first twenty years and includes work by many of the most exciting new voices in Irish fiction. Contributors include Colin Barrett, Kevin Barry, Sara Baume, Claire-Louise Bennett, Mary Costello, Danny Denton, Wendy Erskine, Oisín Fagan, David Hayden, Claire Keegan, Leona Lee Cully, Molly McCloskey, Lisa McInerney, Danielle McLaughlin, Martin Malone, Lia Mills, Nuala O’Connor, Philip Ó Ceallaigh, Sean O’Reilly, Keith Ridgway and William Wall.
Contact for rights negotiations Declan Meade, The Stinging Fly, PO Box 6016, Dublin 1, Ireland stingingfly.org / stingingfly@gmail.com +353 86 840 9133
18 | Fiction
Oneworld / June 2018
CAOILINN HUGHES
337 pp
ORCHID AND THE WASP
Caoilinn Hughes is an award-winning Irish writer from Galway, whose poetry collection Gathering Evidence won the Irish Times Shine/Strong Award. Her work has appeared in Tin House, POETRY, Granta, Best British Poetry, Poetry Ireland, BBC Radio 3 and elsewhere. Orchid and the Wasp is her debut novel.
Raised in Dublin by single-minded, careerist parents, Gael Foss observes from a young age how a person’s ambitions and ideals can be compromised. When her financier father walks out during the economic crash of 2008, her family fractures. Determined not to let her loved ones fall victim to circumstance, Gael leaves Dublin for the cokedusted social clubs of London and Manhattan’s gallery scene during the Occupy movement, always working an angle but slowly becoming a stranger to those who know her. Orchid and the Wasp is a novel about gigantic ambitions and social upheaval. It challenges bootstrap morality, questioning what we owe one another and what we earn, what makes for a good life, and how events in our lives can turn us into people we never intended to be.
Contact for rights negotiations Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency, 156 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1210, New York, NY 10010, USA thecleggagency.com / info@thecleggagency.com
Doire Press / 2018
Fiction | 19
ROSEMARY JENKINSON
CATHOLIC BOY
ROSEMARY JENKINSON CATHOLIC BOY
Doire Press 152 pp
T L
Catholic Boy is a collection of contemporary short stories set mainly in Belfast, but also abroad. Some stories are witty but all make serious points about our current society. Many of the stories involve women in their thirties dealing with sexual encounters and trying to make physical and spiritual connections in a lonely, dislocated world. Other stories are about Northern Ireland’s war-torn legacy.
ROSEMARY JENKINSON Rosemary Jenkinson was born in Belfast and is an award-winning playwright and short story writer. She is Artist-in-Residence at the Lyric Theatre Belfast. Catholic Boy is her third short story collection.
Contact for rights negotiations Lisa Frank, Doire Press, Aille, Inverin, County Galway, Ireland doirepress.com / doirepress@gmail.com +353 091 593290
20 | Fiction
Dalkey Archive Press / August 2018
PAUL LARKIN
ÉILIS FROM THE FLATS Paul Larkin
200 pp
Éilis Éilís from the Flats
Paul Larkin worked for five years in the Danish merchant navy before taking a degree in Scandinavian and Celtic Studies. Larkin then went on to train as a film director with the BBC. He had a long career in journalism and film/ documentary-making before going back to work with Scandinavian languages and fiction in general as a translator, literary critic and author.
This Irish novel of scandal and substance abuse follows the exploits of Tommy Baker, a veteran journalist; James Tierney, a researcher at Empire Television; Jimmy Heffernan, a reformed north-side Dublin gangster and local hero; and Éilis Devanney, who lives in the Star of the Sea flats, in Jimmy’s neighbourhood. When Éilis writes a document for Tommy and James, revealing that Jimmy is in no way reformed, there is no going back. The truth will out. Éilis from the Flats is a hard-nosed but tender chronicle of flawed characters, bad choices and contemporary Dublin life. Inspired by The Stocking Merchant, nineteenth-century Danish author Steen Steenson Blicher’s notorious folk tale, Éilis from the Flats is the first title in Larkin’s ‘Good Friday Sting’ series of novels.
Contact for rights negotiations Christopher Deveau, Dalkey Archive Press, Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, 36 Fenian Street, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin D02 CH22, Ireland dalkeyarchive.com / deveau@dalkeyarchive.com
Lilliput Press / June 2018
Fiction | 21
EMER MARTIN
THE CRUELTY MEN
448 pp
Abandoned by her parents when they resettle in Meath, Mary O Conaill faces the task of raising her younger siblings alone. Padraig disappears, SeĂĄn joins the Christian Brothers, Bridget escapes and her brother Seamus inherits the farm. Maeve is sent to serve a family of shopkeepers in the local town. Later, pregnant and unwed, she is placed in a Magdalene laundry, where her twins are forcibly removed from her. Spanning the 1930s to the 1970s, this sweeping multi-generational family saga follows the psychic and physical displacement of a society in freefall after independence.
Emer Martin is a Dubliner who has lived in Paris, London, the Middle East and the USA. Her first novel, Breakfast in Babylon, won Listowel Book of the Year in 1996. More Bread or I’ll Appear, her second, was published internationally in 1999. She has worked as a theatre producer and publisher and now lives between California and County Meath.
Contact for rights negotiations The Lilliput Press, 62/63 Sitric Road, Dublin D07 AE27, Ireland lilliputpress.ie / info@lilliputpress.ie +353 1 671 1647
22 | Fiction
New Island Books / April 2018
PATRICK McCABE
HEARTLAND
Seven men wait in Mervyn’s Mountain Bar for the arrival of Tony Begley and his six-inch boning knife, Sweety. Ray ‘Ringo’ Wade hides above them in the rafters, silent and consumed by shame as Jody, the only friend he’s ever known, lies beaten and bound in the outhouse, waiting to meet his maker at the hands of the bar’s raucous inhabitants.
324 pp
The reason for this bloody retribution? Ray and Jody went and jacked over the one and only W.W. Monroe – the man who took them in, for better or worse, and single-handedly moulded Glasson County into a place people could be proud of.
Patrick McCabe is the author of The Butcher Boy, which won the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for Fiction, The Dead School and Breakfast on Pluto, among others. The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Winterwood was published in 2006 and was named the 2007 Irish Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards.
A backwoods sinfonia of rough poetry and black comedy about the love we give and the horror we visit upon one other – and ourselves.
Contact for rights negotiations Edwin Higel, 16 Priory Office Park, Stillorgan, Co. Dublin, Ireland newisland.ie / edwin.higel@newisland.ie +49 7221 702 9956
Brandon / October 2018
Fiction | 23
FRANK McGUINNESS
PAPRIKA
The world of an operatic tenor violently collides with that of a homeless couple on the streets of New York. A tactical heart-to-heart tells of a ghostly experience and the damaging love of a poet. A young immigrant scores a small but significant victory over his resentful supervisor. A father mourns the death of his gay son, murdered at the hands of the state.
224 pp
Hypnotic, spell-binding prose which explores the falseness of boundaries and the madness of love in mythic, urban contemporary settings. Brave both in its subject matter and linguistic choices, this first short story collection from Frank McGuinness showcases the work of a master storyteller. A world-renowned playwright, Frank McGuinness’s first great stage hit was the highly acclaimed Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme. He has written several film scripts, including Dancing at Lughnasa, and has published several anthologies of poetry. His novels, Arimathea (2013) and The Woodcutter and his Family (2017), were both published by the O’Brien Press to great acclaim.
Contact for rights negotiations Kunak McGann, The O’Brien Press, 12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar, Dublin 6, Ireland obrien.ie / rights@obrien.ie +353 1 492 3333
24 | Fiction
Faber & Faber / October 2018
EOIN McNAMEE
THE VOGUE
Late 1944, and two teenagers dance the Vogue in silence on the projectionist’s floor of the Cranfield Aerodrome. She draws the outlines of their footwork in eyebrow pencil on the white sheet. He loses their bet. Decades later, a ghost returns to Mourne to identify a body found in the shifting sands. Names have long since been changed; children long since cast out; lies long thought forgotten.
272 pp
Set against an eerie landscape, awash with secrets, The Vogue is a grimly poetic dance through the intertwined stories of a deeply religious community, an abandoned military base and a long-shuttered children’s care home.
Eoin McNamee’s novels include Resurrection Man, later made into a film, The Blue Tango, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, Orchid Blue, described by John Burnside in the Guardian as ‘not only a political novel of the highest order but also that rare phenomenon, a genuinely tragic work of art’, and Blue Is the Night. He lives in Sligo.
Contact for rights negotiations Emma Cheshire, Faber & Faber, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3DA, UK faber.co.uk / emma.cheshire@faber.co.uk +44 20 7927 3884
Brandon / June 2018
Fiction | 25
SAM MILLAR
THE BESPOKE HITMAN
320 pp
When three friends decide to rob a bank on a rainy Halloween evening in Belfast city centre, heavily armed and disguised as wolves, their careful planning goes awry. While fleeing empty-handed, one of them knocks a bank customer unconscious and takes their briefcase – which the friends soon learn contains half a million pounds belonging to a paramilitary group. Now the three friends are on the run from legendary hitman Jack Porter, who will stop at nothing to mercilessly hunt them down.
Sam Millar is a Belfast writer and playwright. He has won the prestigious Aisling Award for Art and Culture and the Brian Moore Award for Short Stories, among others. Jennifer Johnston praised his writing for its ‘fluency and courage of language’. His autobiography, On the Brinks, and noir novels, including the Karl Kane series, have been widely acclaimed.
Contact for rights negotiations Kunak McGann, The O’Brien Press, 12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar, Dublin 6, Ireland obrien.ie / rights@obrien.ie +353 1 492 3333
26 | Fiction
Penguin Ireland / April 2018
LIZ NUGENT
SKIN DEEP The deliciously sinister new novel from the bestselling author of Lying in Wait. Cordelia Russell has been living on the French Riviera for twentyfive years, passing herself off as an English socialite. But her luck, and the kindness of strangers, has run out.
374 pp
The arrival of a visitor from her distant past shocks Cordelia. She reacts violently to the intrusion and flees her flat to spend a drunken night at a glittering party. As dawn breaks, she stumbles home through the back streets. Even before she opens her door she can hear the flies buzzing. She did not expect the corpse inside to start decomposing quite so quickly . . .
In 2014, Liz Nugent’s first novel, Unravelling Oliver, was a number one bestseller and won the Crime Fiction Prize at the 2014 Irish Book Awards. Her second novel, Lying in Wait, went straight to number one in the Irish bestseller charts, remaining there for nearly two months and winning her a second Irish Book Award. She lives in Dublin with her husband.
Contact for rights negotiations Marianne Gunn O’Connor, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin 2, Ireland mgoclitagency@eircom.net
Little, Brown / September 2018
Fiction | 27
NUALA O’CONNOR
BECOMING BELLE A witty feminist novel set in Victorian London, based on the true story of a woman ahead of her time . . . In 1887, Isabel Bilton is the eldest of three daughters in a middle-class military family, growing up in a small garrison town. By 1891 she is the Countess of Clancarty, dubbed ‘the peasant countess’ by the press, and a member of the Irish aristocracy. Becoming Belle is the story of the four years in between, of Belle’s rapid ascent and the people who tried to tear her down.
384 pp
Set against an absorbing portrait of Victorian London, Belle’s is a timeless rags-to-riches story.
Nuala O’Connor (aka Nuala Ní Chonchúir) lives in East Galway. Her short story collection Joyride to Jupiter was published by New Island in 2017. Her third novel, Miss Emily, about the poet Emily Dickinson and her Irish maid, was shortlisted for the Eason Book Club Novel of the Year 2015 and longlisted for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award.
Contact for rights negotiations Gráinne Fox, Fletcher & Company, 78 Fifth Avenue, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10011, USA fletcherandco.com / grainne@fletcherandco.com
28 | Fiction
Weidenfeld & Nicolson / October 2018
PARAIC O’DONNELL
THE HOUSE ON VESPER SANDS 1893, and in London the snow is falling. It is falling as Gideon Bliss seeks shelter in a Soho church, where his one-time love Angie Tatton is at death’s door, murmuring about those she calls the Spiriters. In the morning she is gone. The snow is falling as a seamstress climbs onto a ledge above Mayfair, a mysterious message stitched into her own skin. It is falling as she steadies herself and closes her eyes.
336 pp
It is falling, too, as her employer, Lord Strythe, vanishes into the night, watched by society columnist Octavia Hillingdon.
Paraic O’Donnell studied English and French at University College Dublin and holds an MPhil in Linguistics from Trinity College Dublin. His debut novel, The Maker of Swans, was shortlisted for Newcomer of the Year at the BGE Irish Book Awards 2016.
She and Gideon will soon be drawn into the same mystery. Their paths will cross as the darkness gathers, leading them at last to what lies hidden at the house on Vesper Sands.
Contact for rights negotiations Lucy Luck, Conville & Walsh, Haymarket House, 28–29 Haymarket, London, SW1Y 4SP, UK convilleandwalsh.com / lucy@convilleandwalsh.com +44 20 7393 4200
Fiction | 29
Little, Brown / June 2018
CAROLINE O’DONOGHUE
PROMISING YOUNG WOMEN Jane Peters is an adrift twentysomething by day and a world-weary agony aunt by night. But when an office party goes too far, Jane dissolves into the high-stakes world of being the ‘other woman’: a role she has the right advice for but not the smarts to follow through on. What starts out as a drunken mistake quickly unravels as Jane discovers that sex and power go hand-in-hand, and that it’s hard to keep your head when you’ve become someone else’s dirty little secret.
352 pp
A promotion and a pay rise aren’t the only changes that Jane’s faced with. As her physical and mental stability start to falter, her career, her friendships and even her life are put in jeopardy . . . Caroline O’Donoghue is a contributing editor for The-Pool.com and has written for Glamour, The Irish Times and Grazia. She also co-hosts the podcast ‘School for Dumb Women’. Find out more on Twitter (@Czaroline) or at czaroline.com.
Contact for rights negotiations Bryony Woods, Diamond Kahn and Woods Literary Agency dkwlitagency.co.uk / bryony@dkwlitagency.co.uk
30 | Fiction
4th Estate / June 2018
JOSEPH O’NEILL
GOOD TROUBLE In Good Trouble, the first story collection from Joseph O’Neill, characters are forced to discover exactly who they are – and who they can never be.
176 pp
There’s Rob, who swears he’s a dependable member of society but can’t scrape together a character reference to prove that’s the case. And Jayne, who has no choice but to investigate a strange noise downstairs while her husband lies glued to the bed with fear. And a poet who tries to fathom what makes a poet. Do you even have to write poetry?
Joseph O’Neill lives in New York and teaches at Bard College. He is the author of four novels, one of which, Netherland, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His short stories have been published in The New Yorker and Harper’s. He won the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Prize for Fiction and the 2009 Kerry Fiction Award for Netherland.
Packed with O’Neill’s trademark acerbic humour, Good Trouble explores the maddening and secretly political space between thoughts and deeds, between men and women, between goose and not-goose.
Contact for rights negotiations Natasha Fairweather, Rogers, Coleridge and White, 20 Powis Mews, London, W11 1JN, UK rcwlitagency.com / natasha@rcwlitagency.com +44 20 7221 3717
Irish Academic Press / September 2018
Fiction | 31
RICHARD O’RAWE
NORTHERN HEIST When James ‘Ructions’ O’Hare put together a crack team to rob the National Bank in Belfast in November 2004, even he didn’t realise he was about to carry off one of the biggest bank heists in British and Irish history. And he’ll be damned if the Provos are getting a slice of it.
268 pp
In Richard O’Rawe’s stunning debut novel, a new voice in Irish fiction has been unleashed that will shock, surprise and thrill as he takes you on a white-knuckle ride through Belfast’s criminal underbelly. Enter the deadly world of tiger kidnappings, kangaroo courts, money laundering, drug deals and double-crosses.
Richard O’Rawe is a former Irish republican prisoner and was a leading figure in the 1981 H-Block hunger strike. He is the author of the bestselling books Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-Block Hunger Strike, Afterlives: The Hunger Strike and the Secret Offer that Changed Irish History, and In the Name of the Son: The Gerry Conlon Story.
Northern Heist is a roller-coaster bank robbery thriller with twists and turns from beginning to end.
Contact for rights negotiations Conor Graham, Irish Academic Press, Tuckmill House, 10 George’s Street, Newbridge, Co. Kildare, Ireland irishacademicpress.ie / conor.graham@iap.ie +353 86 387 0991
32 | Fiction
Bloomsbury Publishing / March 2018
DAVID PARK
TRAVELLING IN A STRANGE LAND
© Holly Ovenden
The world is shrouded in snow. With transport ground to a halt, Tom must venture out into a transformed and treacherous landscape to collect his son, sick and stranded in student lodgings. But on this solitary drive from Belfast to Sunderland, Tom will be drawn into another journey, one without map or guide, and forced to chart pathways of family history haunted by memory and clouded in regret.
176 pp
Travelling in a Strange Land is a work of exquisite loss and transformative grace. It is a novel about fathers and sons, grief, memory, family and love; about the gulfs that lie between us and those we love, and the wrong turns that we take on our way to find them. David Park has written nine previous books, including The Big Snow, Swallowing the Sun, The Truth Commissioner, The Light of Amsterdam, which was shortlisted for the 2014 International IMPAC Prize, and most recently The Poets’ Wives, which was selected as Belfast’s Choice for One City One Book 2014. He lives in County Down.
Contact for rights negotiations Joanna Everard, Bloomsbury Publishing, 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK bloomsbury.com / joanna.everard@bloomsbury.com
Faber & Faber / September 2018
Fiction | 33
SALLY ROONEY
NORMAL PEOPLE Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years.
288 pp
This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person’s life – a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel, and it tells us – blazingly – about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege. Alternating menace with overwhelming tenderness, Sally Rooney’s second novel breathes fiction with new life. Sally Rooney’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The White Review, The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, Stonecutter and the Winter Pages anthology. Her debut novel, Conversations with Friends, was the most popular debut in the 2017 end-ofyear round-ups. She was the winner of the Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year Award.
Contact for rights negotiations Emma Cheshire, Faber & Faber, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3DA, UK faber.co.uk / emma.cheshire@faber.co.uk +44 20 7927 3884
34 | Fiction
Doubleday / March 2018
DONAL RYAN
FROM A LOW AND QUIET SEA Farouk’s country has been torn apart by war. Lampy’s heart has been laid to waste by Chloe. John’s past torments him as he nears his end.
192 pp
The refugee. The dreamer. The penitent. From war-torn Syria to smalltown Ireland, three men, scarred by all they have loved and lost, are searching for some version of home. Each is drawn towards a powerful reckoning, one that will bring them together in the most unexpected of ways.
Donal Ryan is from Nenagh in County Tipperary. He is the awardwinning author of four novels and one short story collection. A former civil servant, he now lectures in creative writing at the University of Limerick. He lives with his wife Anne Marie and their two children.
Contact for rights negotiations Helen Edwards, Penguin Random House, 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London, W5 5SA, UK penguinrandomhouse.co.uk / hedwards@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk
Corvus / May 2018
Fiction | 35
EITHNE SHORTALL
GRACE AFTER HENRY Grace sees her boyfriend Henry everywhere. In the supermarket, on the street, at the graveyard. Only Henry is dead. He died two months earlier, leaving a huge hole in Grace’s life and in her heart. But then Henry turns up to fix the boiler one evening, and Grace can’t decide if she’s hallucinating or has suddenly developed psychic powers. Grace isn’t going mad – this man is not Henry at all but someone else who looks uncannily like him. The hole in Grace’s heart grows ever larger.
432 pp
Grace becomes captivated by this stranger, Andy – to her, he is Henry, and yet he is not. Can Grace recreate that lost love with Andy, resurrecting Henry in the process, or does loving Andy mean letting go of Henry? Eithne Shortall studied jouralism at Dublin City University and has lived in London, France and America. Now based in Dublin, she is chief arts writer for The Sunday Times Ireland. She enjoys sea swimming, cycling and eating scones.
Contact for rights negotiations Kate Straker, Atlantic Books, Ormond House, 26–27 Boswell Street, London, WC1N 3JZ, UK atlantic-books.co.uk / katestraker@atlantic-books.co.uk +44 20 7269 0246
36 | Fiction
Apollo / August 2018
WILLIAM WALL
GRACE’S DAY
240 pp
© Anna Morrison
Grace and her mother and sisters live on an island off the west coast of Ireland. Their father is a successful writer of travel books that advocate a simpler way of life, though he is so seldom there that his family become the subjects of his social experiments and his children’s freedom is indistinguishable from poverty. Grace and Jeannie take turns to look after their little sister Emily. Then one day – Grace’s day – Em falls from the island’s watchtower. But why and how Em found her way to that dangerous height remains a mystery, and Grace’s lifelong remorse and guilt force her to relive the moment of her sister’s death again and again.
William Wall is the author of four novels, two volumes of short stories and three collections of poetry. His work has won many awards, including the Virginia Faulkner Award and the Raymond Carver Award. In 2016, he won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize.
Contact for rights negotiations Claire Kennedy, Head of Zeus, 5–8 Hardwick Street, Clerkenwell, London, EC1R 4RG, UK headofzeus.com / claire@headofzeus.com
Dedalus Press / February 2019
Poetry | 37
PAT BORAN
THEN AGAIN
80 pp
Paintings in galleries, artefacts on museum shelves, a variety of historical events, and found objects of all shapes and sizes, the latest collection of poems by prize-winning poet Pat Boran finds its inspiration far from the poet’s trademark starting point of autobiography. Instead, Then Again looks resolutely outwards, the poet on an adventure of poem-making, visiting various parts of Ireland, Italy, France, Cyprus and Spain . . . at all times travelling light and without expectation, but en route discovering some of the unexpected connections between past and present, between our personal and shared histories.
Pat Boran was born in Portlaoise in 1963 and lives in Dublin. He has published six collections of poetry. A Man Is Only as Good, a pocket-sized selected poems, was published in 2017. His poetry has been translated into Italian, Portuguese, Hungarian and Macedonian. Awards include The Patrick Kavanagh Award and the US-based Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award. He is a member of Aosdána.
Contact for rights negotiations Raffaela Tranchino, Manager, Dedalus Press, 13 Moyclare Road, Baldoyle, Dublin D13 K1C2, Ireland dedaluspress.com / manager@dedaluspress.com +353 1 839 2034
38 | Poetry
Carcanet Press / June 2018
JOHN F. DEANE
DEAR PILGRIMS
112 pp
‘Mirrorscapes, Paradise Island, Bahamas’ by Tony O’Malley © Jane O’Malley
Dear Pilgrims in motion is rich in incident and in redemption. In a decisively secular age, Deane’s is a poetry of Christian belief. It includes actual pilgrimages: the poet moves through England (East Anglia in particular), Israel and Palestine, disclosing a ‘new testament’ that reimagines the Christian faith through the eyes of an unknown female disciple of Christ. He vividly adapts the Middle English poem ‘Pearl’ and realises it for our time. He is also a master of the sonnet as an instrument of love, doubt and faith. The poet’s voice, perhaps because of the timeless wisdom it carries, is vital and contemporary. The clarity of his verse and purpose makes his voice unique.
John F. Deane was born on Achill Island in 1943. He founded Poetry Ireland – the national poetry society – and The Poetry Ireland Review in 1978, and is the founder of The Dedalus Press. He is the recipient of the O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry and the Marten Toonder Award for Literature. He is a member of Aosdána.
Contact for rights negotiations Foichl Miah, Carcanet Press Ltd, Fourth Floor, Alliance House, 30 Cross Street, Manchester, M2 7AQ, UK carcanet.co.uk / foichl@carcanet.co.uk
Poetry | 39
Cló Iar-Chonnacht / December 2017
ÁINE DURKIN
MISE ÁINE: AN BHEAN ISTIGH Award-winning blogger Áine Durkin has been writing poetry for years, but this is her first published collection. It was awarded the first prize for a debut book in the 2017 Oireachtas na Gaeilge literary awards.
160 pp
Mise Áine: An Bhean Istigh (I’m Áine: The Woman Inside) is part memoir and part observation over a number of years. Some poems deal with personal events in the poet’s life and others look outwards to the world and events around her.
Áine Durkin is originally from Connemara but has lived in Inishowen, County Donegal, since 1980. She is an award-winning (Oireachtas na Gaeilge Literary Competitions, Pan-Celtic Festival) poet, songwriter and blogger.
Contact for rights negotiations Micheál Ó Conghaile, Director, Cló IarChonnacht, Inverin, Co. Galway cic.ie / moccic@eircom.net +353 91 593 360
40 | Poetry
Carcanet Press / May 2018
MARTINA EVANS
NOW WE CAN TALK OPENLY ABOUT MEN
88 pp
Martina Evans’s Now We Can Talk Openly about Men is a pair of dramatic monologues from two women in 1920s’ Ireland. Kitty Donovan is a dressmaker with a taste for laudanum in the time of the Irish War of Independence. Babe Cronin is a stenographer who has fallen in love with a young revolutionary, her story set shortly after the Irish Civil War. Both women find a strand of humour in what took place, even as they recall the passion, vertigo and terror of those times. This is a work of vivid contrasts, of age and youth, women and men, the Irish and the English: complementary stories of balance, imbalance and transition.
Martina Evans grew up in County Cork. She has won awards including the Premio Ciampi International Prize for Poetry in 2011, was shortlisted for the 2015 Irish Times Poetry Now Award and received a Grants for the Arts Award in 2015. She is a Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow and reviews for The Irish Times.
Contact for rights negotiations Foichl Miah, Carcanet Press Ltd, Fourth Floor, Alliance House, 30 Cross Street, Manchester, M2 7AQ, UK carcanet.co.uk / foichl@carcanet.co.uk
Poetry | 41
The Gallery Press / February 2018
TOM FRENCH
THE LAST STRAW
‘Sunset’ by Sadie Mackey
The Last Straw is Tom French’s fifth collection. ‘In this collection, when I’m not witnessing maimings and getting electrocuted on building sites, I’m eavesdropping on bridge painters, hanging around public houses and failing abysmally to leave behind me the bog I knew. I appear to be trying to get to the bottom of what I learned there. Whatever coasts I find myself on offer some small relief. Spare a thought for me – staying out of the sun, reading, channel surfing, counting the days until the flight home.’
104 pp
— Tom French
Tom French’s first collection, Touching the Bones (2001), was awarded the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. The Fire Step appeared in 2009, Midnightstown in 2014 and The Way to Work in 2016. He is the winner of the 2015 Dermot Healy Award and the 2016 O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry.
Contact for rights negotiations Jean Barry, The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, Co. Meath, Ireland gallerypress.com / books@gallerypress.com +353 49 854 1779
42 | Poetry
Carcanet Press / June 2018
JAMES HARPUR
THE WHITE SILHOUETTE
96 pp
‘Lower Bockhampton I’ by David Inshaw
At the heart of James Harpur’s The White Silhouette is a meditative poem inspired by the Book of Kells – a poem that follows the nature of the divine, the efficacy of sacred art and the way of silence. The title poem is a haunting journey of ‘missed encounters’ in the landscapes of Wiltshire, Tipperary and Patmos. Elsewhere, Harpur writes about pilgrimage, the Perseids, mystical experiences and icons and iconoclasm – from Rublev’s golden images to decapitated angels in Galway. He complements his explorations of the sacred with more directly personal poems. The White Silhouette is the richest summation of his spiritual journey to date.
James Harpur has published five poetry collections with Anvil Press and is poetry editor of the Temenos Academy Review and a member of Aosdána, the Irish academy of the arts. His Angels and Harvesters (2012) was a PBS Recommendation and shortlisted for the 2013 Irish Times Poetry Now Award. The Dark Age (2007) won the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award.
Contact for rights negotiations Foichl Miah, Carcanet Press Ltd, Fourth Floor, Alliance House, 30 Cross Street, Manchester, M2 7AQ, UK carcanet.co.uk / foichl@carcanet.co.uk
Faber & Faber / June 2018
Poetry | 43
SEAMUS HEANEY
100 POEMS
184 pp
Seamus Heaney had the idea to form a personal selection of poems from across the entire arc of his writing life, small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction for all comers. He never managed to do this himself, and no other edition exists which has such a broad range, drawing from first to last of his prize-winning collections. But now, finally, the project has been returned to, resulting in an intimate gathering of poems chosen and introduced by the Heaney family. In 100 Poems, readers will enjoy the most loved and celebrated poems, as well as discovering new favourites. It is a singular and welcoming anthology, reaching out far and wide, now and for years to come.
Death of a Naturalist (1966), Seamus Heaney’s first collection of poems, was followed by poetry, criticism and translations which established him as the leading poet of his generation. In 1995, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He also won the Whitbread Book of the Year for The Spirit Level and Beowulf, and was awarded the 2010 Forward Prize for Best Collection for Human Chain.
Contact for rights negotiations Emma Cheshire, Faber & Faber, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3DA, UK faber.co.uk / emma.cheshire@faber.co.uk +44 20 7927 3884
44 | Poetry
Dedalus Press / October 2018
JOHN KELLY
NOTIONS
Constantly inventive, the cool-headed poems in John Kelly’s long-overdue debut reveal an author equally at home in the closely observed standalone lyric and in the longer apparently improvisational pieces that contribute so much to this book’s extraordinary brio and style.
80 pp
Here are glimpses of the troubled North of his youth, extraordinary encounters with art, music and writing – and their creators – and poems that chart the often seismic changes that come with love, fatherhood and loss. Notions is a book full of humour, play, wonder, woundedness and infectious energy, in which history and the natural world are never far away.
John Kelly was born in Enniskillen in 1965 and lives in Dublin. An awardwinning broadcaster and fiction writer, his work features in many journals and anthologies. His fiction titles include From out of the City, shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Bord Gáis Irish Book Awards in 2014. A radio play, The Pipes, was broadcast by RTÉ.
Contact for rights negotiations Raffaela Tranchino, Manager, Dedalus Press, 13 Moyclare Road, Baldoyle, Dublin D13 K1C2, Ireland dedaluspress.com / manager@dedaluspress.com +353 1 839 2034
Faber & Faber / August 2018
Poetry | 45
NICK LAIRD
FEEL FREE Nick Laird has been an assured and brilliant voice in contemporary poetry since his acclaimed debut, To a Fault, in 2005. Feel Free, his fourth collection, effortlessly spans the Atlantic, combining the acoustic expansiveness of Whitman or Ashbery with the lyricism of Laird’s forebears, Heaney, MacNeice and Yeats. With characteristic variety, invention and wit (here are elegies, monologues, formal poems and free verse), the poet explores the sundry patterns of freedom and constraint – the family, the impress of history, the body itself – and how we might transcend them.
88 pp
Feel Free is always daring, always renewing, and Laird’s most remarkable work to date. Nick Laird is a poet, novelist, screenwriter, and former lawyer. Awards for his writing include the Betty Trask Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Aldeburgh Poetry Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is currently a writer-inresidence at New York University.
Contact for rights negotiations Emma Cheshire, Faber & Faber, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3DA, UK faber.co.uk / emma.cheshire@faber.co.uk +44 20 7927 3884
46 | Poetry
The Gallery Press / August 2018
DEREK MAHON
AGAINST THE CLOCK
‘Acrylic Paint Drawing’ by Ciarán Lennon
Against the Clock, a surprising and exciting development, brings together Derek Mahon’s recent work – that is, since New Collected Poems (2011).
80 pp
These new poems, some autobiographical, most written in the space of a year, concern themselves with age and time, ‘the mere fact of existence’ and the creative principle itself. One of the finest contemporary poets, the author here demonstrates once again an unfailing poetic energy – ‘still singing, still going strong’.
Derek Mahon was born in Belfast and now lives in Kinsale, County Cork. Awards include the Irish Academy of Letters Award and the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize. Recent titles include Harbour Lights (2005), New Collected Poems (2011) and Echo’s Grove (translations, 2013). Rising Late (new poems) and Olympia and the Internet (prose) were published in 2017.
Contact for rights negotiations Jean Barry, The Gallery Press, Loughcrew, Oldcastle, Co. Meath, Ireland gallerypress.com / books@gallerypress.com +353 49 854 1779
Lilliput Press / April 2018
Poetry | 47
AIDAN MATHEWS
STRICTLY NO POETRY
136 pp
In forty-eight remarkable individual poems and sequences, Mathews lays out his witness to the travails and joys of youth and age, to the passing political parade and the intimacies of nature, to the exigencies of parenthood, of frailty and endurance. Informed by a Dublin sensibility, he holds fast to spiritual traditions while testing the parameters and indulgences of the modern world. His voice, by times Keatsian in its lyric penetration, is humanist in its instincts, universal in its reach and exerts a singularity that leaves no shadow.
Aidan Mathews was born in Dublin in 1956 and attended UCD and Stanford University in the USA. He is an awardwinning playwright, novelist and short story writer whose last collection, Charlie Chaplin’s Wishbone and Other Stories, was published by Lilliput Press in 2015. He is currently a radio drama producer in RTÉ.
Contact for rights negotiations The Lilliput Press, 62/63 Sitric Road, Dublin D07 AE27, Ireland lilliputpress.ie / info@lilliputpress.ie +353 1 671 1647
48 | Poetry
Dedalus Press / October 2018
DOIREANN NÍ GHRÍOFA
LIES
When does a poem tell the truth? When is it a lie? Intimate moments carefully reappraised (first dates, break-ups, young parenthood) are the raw material of these vivid and wholly engaging poems, written in Irish and translated here by the author – a process that itself raises questions about poetry and truth.
84 pp
But the real achievement of Ní Ghríofa’s work is the way in which she keeps her personal history open to the wider world, to the imaginative encounters that animate so many of the poems, to an acute awareness of the restless nature of language itself and not least to the women who preceded her and who remain a steadying and guiding presence throughout. Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a bilingual writer born in Galway, raised in Clare and now living in Cork. Her awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, a Seamus Heaney Fellowship, the Michael Hartnett Award and, most recently, the Ostana Prize (Italy). Dedalus Press published her English-language debut, Clasp, in 2015. Lies draws on her three Irish-language collections to date.
Contact for rights negotiations Raffaela Tranchino, Manager, Dedalus Press, 13 Moyclare Road, Baldoyle, Dublin D13 K1C2, Ireland dedaluspress.com / manager@dedaluspress.com +353 1 839 2034
Futa Fata / September 2018
Children’s/Young Adult Literature | 49
GEMMA BREATHNACH with illustrations by TARSILA KRÜSE
PERCY PÉACÓG
32 pp
Percy Peacock is shy. He doesn’t like attention. But there’s one big beautiful attention-grabbing thing about Percy that makes attention unavoidable. Will Percy embrace this amazing thing about himself?
Gemma Breathnach is an established television writer in Ireland, contributing scripts to drama series such as Seacht and Ros na Rún. Luán agus an Mórphianó, her first book, was published in 2015. Tarsila Krüse is a Dublin-based illustrator. Her work is characterfocused and is influenced by everyday relationships with a whimsical and heartwarming touch to it.
Contact for rights negotiations Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin, Futa Fata, Spiddal, Co. Galway, Ireland futafata.ie / foreignrights@futafata.ie + 353 91 504 612
50 | Children’s/Young Adult Literature
Walker Books / October 2018
EOIN COLFER with illustrations by P.J. LYNCH
THE DOG WHO LOST HIS BARK
© P.J. Lynch
A warm, uplifting story for young readers about a boy and his dog, and the power of music to heal; a firsttime collaboration from two Irish Children’s Laureates. Patrick has been desperate for a dog of his own for as long as he can remember – and this summer, with his father away, he longs for a buddy more than ever.
144 pp
In his short doggy life, Oz has suffered at the hands of BAD PEOPLE. Somewhere out there, he believes, is an AWESOME BOY – his BOY. Maybe when they find each other he will learn to BARK again . . .
Eoin Colfer is the New York Times bestselling author of the children’s fantasy series Artemis Fowl. His other notable works include Half Moon Investigations, Airman and The Supernaturalist. He has sold over twenty million books worldwide. P. J. Lynch has won many awards, including the Mother Goose Award, the Christopher Medal three times, the Irish Bisto Book of the Year Award and the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal on two occasions.
Contact for rights negotiations Walker Books Ltd, 87 Vauxhall Walk, London, SE11 5HJ, UK walker.co.uk / foreignrightsuk@walker.co.uk +44 20 7793 0909
Bloomsbury / June 2018
Children’s/Young Adult Literature | 51
BRIAN CONAGHAN
THE WEIGHT OF A THOUSAND FEATHERS Bobby Seed has questions. What’s another word for ‘thesaurus’? How can I tell Bel I want her as my girl friend, not my girlfriend? How much pain is Mum in today? Has she taken her pills? And sometimes, secretly, why us? Bobby’s little brother Danny has questions too. Will Bobby let him have Rice Krispies for dinner? And can he stay up late on the computer? And why won’t Mum’s stupid illness just GO AWAY?
368 pp
But it’s Mum’s question for Bobby that could turn everything on its head. It’s the Big One. The Unthinkable One. If Bobby agrees, he won’t just be soothing her pain. He’ll be helping to end it. Would he? Could he? Brian Conaghan was born and raised in the Scottish town of Coatbridge but now lives in Dublin. He has a Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow. For many years, Brian worked as a teacher and taught in Scotland, Italy and Ireland.
Contact for rights negotiations Nova Hekne, Bloomsbury Publishing, 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3AT, UK bloomsbury.com / nova.hekne@bloomsbury.com +44 20 7631 5568
52 | Children’s/Young Adult Literature
Bloomsbury / July 2018
SARAH CROSSAN
MOONRISE
Joe hasn’t seen his brother for ten years, and it’s for the most brutal of reasons. Ed is on death row. But now Ed’s execution date has been set, and Joe is determined to spend those last weeks with him, no matter what other people think . . .
400 pp
From one-time winner and two-time Carnegie Medal shortlisted author Sarah Crossan, this poignant, stirring, huge-hearted novel asks big questions. What value do you place on life? What can you forgive? And just how do you say goodbye?
Sarah Crossan has lived in Dublin, London and New York, and now lives in Hertfordshire. She graduated with a degree in philosophy and literature before training as an English and drama teacher at Cambridge University. She also holds a master’s degree in creative writing. She is the current Laureate na nÓg, Irish children’s laureate.
Contact for rights negotiations Nova Hekne, Bloomsbury Publishing, 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3AT, UK bloomsbury.com / nova.hekne@bloomsbury.com +44 20 7631 5568
Futa Fata / September 2018
Children’s/Young Adult Literature | 53
SADHBH DEVLIN with illustrations by RÓISÍN HAHESSY
BEAG BÍDEACH
32 pp
Nína loves her little brother Jimí, but sometimes little brothers can be annoying. Nína wants to be tiny (beag bídeach!) so she can go and live with her doll friends. Wouldn’t life in a doll’s house, with no Jimí, be wonderful?!
Sadhbh Devlin is a writer, columnist, television presenter and researcher. Her award-winning blog is www.wherewishescomefrom.ie. Róisín Hahessy is an Irish illustrator currently based in Brazil. She works in television, creating graphics and animations.
Contact for rights negotiations Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin, Futa Fata, Spiddal, Co. Galway, Ireland futafata.ie / foreignrights@futafata.ie + 353 91 504 612
54 | Children’s/Young Adult Literature
Little Island / June 2018
PATRICIA FORDE with illustrations by ELĪNA BRASLIŅA
BUMPFIZZLE THE BEST ON PLANET EARTH
Bumpfizzle is an alien, sent to Earth from Planet Plonk on a research mission. Or is he really just a ten-yearold boy who is feeling a bit disgruntled at all the attention his parents are lavishing on The Baby? It is up to readers to make up their own minds.
128 pp
Either way, Bumpfizzle’s confusion at Earthling behaviours, as reported in his diary and his frequent reports back to Planet Plonk, are hilarious, and his adventures are ridiculous, from eating the cat’s food (it makes him throw up, always good for attention) to biting his teacher (to check if humans would make a good source of food for Plonkers) and attempting to sacrifice a goat (he soon discovers what goats’ horns are for). Patricia Forde has published five books for children, and written two plays and several television drama series for children and teenagers. Elīna Brasliņa has illustrated thirteen titles. Her work was nominated for the Kate Greenaway Medal, and won the Zelta Ābele Award for Book Design.
Contact for rights negotiations Gráinne Clear, Little Island Books, 7 Kenilworth Park, Dublin 6W, Ireland littleisland.ie / grainne.clear@littleisland.ie
Mercier Press / June 2018
Children’s/Young Adult Literature | 55
CETHAN LEAHY
TUESDAYS ARE JUST AS BAD
256 pp
Troubled teenager Adam wakes in hospital after a suicide attempt, but he has company. A ghost. Or perhaps it’s something else. This ‘ghost’ is as confused as Adam about the situation. Narrated from the point of view of this ‘ghost’, Tuesdays Are Just as Bad follows Adam as he attempts to return to normal life. When Adam makes new friends via his counselling sessions, he ends up developing a relationship with one, Aoife. Surrounded by these friends, Adam starts to feel happy again. The ‘ghost’, however, becomes jealous and decides that the only way he can be free of this feeling is to isolate Adam so he can have him all to himself, with catastrophic results.
Cethan Leahy is a writer, filmmaker and editor. He has written two Fiction Express eBooks for middle grade. His animation short The Beast of Bath was broadcast on television, and his short film The Amazing appeared in Cork film anthology Cork, Like.
Contact for rights negotiations Deirdre Roberts, Mercier Press, Unit 3B Oak House, Bessboro Road, Blackrock, Cork, Ireland mercierpress.ie / deirdre.roberts@mercierpress.ie +353 21 461 4700
56 | Children’s/Young Adult Literature
Scholastic / May 2018
LOUISE O’NEILL
THE SURFACE BREAKS Deep beneath the cold, stormy sea, Gaia is a mermaid who dreams of freedom from her controlling father. On her first swim to the surface, she is drawn towards a human boy. Gaia longs to join his carefree world, but how much will she have to sacrifice? What will it take for the little mermaid to find her voice?
323 pp
Hans Christian Andersen’s worldfamous fairy tale is reimagined through a searing feminist lens by one of Ireland’s most talented writers.
Louise O’Neill has written two novels for young adults and one, Almost Love, for adults. Her second novel, Asking for It, won the Specsavers Senior Children’s Book of the Year 2015 and was recently adapted for the stage by Landmark Productions.
Contact for rights negotiations Penelope Daukes, Euston House, 24 Eversholt Street, London, NW1 1DB, UK scholastic.co.uk / pdaukes@scholastic.co.uk
The O’Brien Press / March 2019
Children’s/Young Adult Literature | 57
CHARLIE PIKE
JACOB’S LADDER We have heard your call. You no longer need to fear. You will receive five messages, of which this is the first. The last message will inform you of the time and place of your salvation.
320 pp
Two hundred years from now, the Earth is dying, and a series of messages sent to humanity from an alien civilisation promise rescue to those strong enough to survive on their planet. Initiate Leon, a member of the True Path warrior culture, and his resourceful servant, Martha, are searching for the fifth and final message when Leon discovers that his genes contain Jacob’s Ladder, an adaptation for life on the alien planet. He is part alien and part human, and in grave danger from those who wish to take what is in his body. Charlie Pike started his writing career when he lived in Turkey, teaching English to adults and children. When he returned to Ireland he worked as an advertising copywriter and freelance journalist, writing feature articles for Irish newspapers, and in 2003 he formed his own web company, Usable Design. He is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin.
Contact for rights negotiations Kunak McGann, The O’Brien Press, 12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar, Dublin 6, Ireland obrien.ie / rights@obrien.ie +353 1 492 3333
58 | Children’s/Young Adult Literature
Little Island / June 2018
EMMA QUIGLEY
BANK
Bank is the hilarious story of a bunch of pupils who have the genius idea of pooling their savings, setting up a bank and lending money to their schoolmates at extortionate interest rates. What better way to make a little extra pocket money? They have no trouble finding customers and before long they are rolling in cash. Soon schoolmates want to deposit savings with them as well.
224 pp
The whole thing starts to unravel all too soon, and as the bank comes crashing down and the money starts to melt away, the lads are desperate to rescue their emergency stash, only to find that one of their group has cleverly hidden it in a not-soclever place. Emma Quigley lives in Dublin with her partner and teenage son. By day she works as a freelance writer in the IT world, but by night she writes stories for children and scripts for television and theatre.
Contact for rights negotiations GrĂĄinne Clear, Little Island Books, 7 Kenilworth Park, Dublin 6W, Ireland littleisland.ie / grainne.clear@littleisland.ie
Clo Iar-Chonnacht / August 2017
Children’s/Young Adult Literature | 59
ÁINE UÍ FHOGHLÚ
LABHAIRAMACH.COM Ciara Ní Cholmáin is a young and isolated secondary school student who has become the target of a group of bullies led by a girl who is tall, beautiful and popular. Sandra and her friends torment Ciara with taunts and bullying – before school, during school and after school.
160 pp
Not only is she being bullied in person, but she is also receiving nasty text messages and someone is posting photos of her on the website labhairamach.com (speakup.com). Just when Ciara is at her lowest ebb she finds an unexpected ally, a friend who provides the help that she so badly needs.
Áine Uí Fhoghlú comes from the Gaeltacht area of An Rinn in County Waterford and is an author, poet and post-primary teacher. This is her fifth work of fiction. She has also published three collections of poetry.
Contact for rights negotiations Micheál Ó Conghaile, Director, Cló IarChonnacht, Inverin, Co. Galway cic.ie / moccic@eircom.net +353 91 593 360
60 | Children’s/Young Adult Literature
Bloomsbury / February 2018
MARY WATSON
THE WREN HUNT Every winter, Wren Silke is chased through the forest in a warped version of a childhood game. The boys who haunt her are judges, powerful and frightening pursuers, who know nothing of her true identity. If they knew she was an augur, their sworn enemy, the game would turn deadly.
416 pp
But Wren is on the hunt, too. Sent undercover as an intern to the Harkness Foundation – enemy headquarters – her family’s survival rests on finding a secret meant to stay hidden. As the enmity between two ancient magics reaches breaking point, Wren is torn between old loyalties and new lies. And trapped in the most dangerous game of her life.
Mary Watson is from Cape Town and now lives on the west coast of Ireland. Highlights of her adult writing career include being awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing in Oxford in 2006 and being included on the Hay Festival’s 2014 Africa39 list of influential writers from sub-Saharan Africa.
Contact for rights negotiations Nova Hekne, Bloomsbury Publishing, 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3AT, UK bloomsbury.com / nova.hekne@bloomsbury.com +44 20 7631 5568
Faber & Faber / March 2019
Non-fiction | 61
KEVIN BREATHNACH
TUNNEL VISION
288 pp
Tunnel Vision is a book unlike any other. A portrait of the narrator’s relationships in his mid-twenties; a memoir based in Dublin that follows his travels to Paris, Gwangju, Munich and Madrid; a reckoning with addictions to drugs and pornography; a tragi-comedy of sexual repression; the autobiography of a compulsive liar; a meditation on artifice and honesty.
Kevin Breathnach is a writer from Dublin. His writing has appeared in the Dublin Review, The White Review, gorse and elsewhere. This is his first book.
Yet this intimacy comes into collision with essays of piercingly intelligent criticism of art, photography and architecture, written with the intellectual precision of John Berger, Geoff Dyer or Teju Cole. Whether dissecting European architecture’s obsession with historical loss, or the male gaze in photographer André Kertész’s work, Breathnach’s writing heralds a dazzling new voice in literary prose.
Contact for rights negotiations Emma Cheshire, Faber & Faber, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3DA, UK faber.co.uk / emma.cheshire@faber.co.uk +44 20 7927 3884
62 | Non-fiction
Granta / June 2018
JOHN CONNELL
THE COW BOOK: A STORY OF LIFE ON AN IRISH FAMILY FARM Farming has been in John Connell’s family for generations, but he never intended to follow in his father’s footsteps. Until, one winter, he finds himself back on the farm and begins to learn the ways of the farmer and the way of the cows.
300 pp
The Cow Book is the story of a calving season, and records the hypnotic rhythm of the farming day. It is also the story of the cow itself, from its domestication and worship as a god by the Ancient Egyptians to the modern practice of mechanised herds. And, above all, it is the story of Connell’s life as a farmer, of his relationship with his birthplace of County Longford, with the community around the family farm, with the animals he tends and with his father. John Connell is an award-winning author, journalist and producer. His debut novel, The Ghost Estate, was published by Picador ANZ. He has also been published by Granta. He currently lives in rural Ireland.
Contact for rights negotiations Raffaella De Angelis, WME Entertainment, 100 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1HB, UK wmeentertainment.com / rda@wmeentertainment.com +44 20 8929 8400
Non-fiction | 63
Irish Academic Press / June 2018
GERALD DAWE
THE WRONG COUNTRY: ESSAYS ON MODERN IRISH WRITING This engagingly personal chronicle explores the lives and times of leading Irish writers, including W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Patrick Kavanagh, James Plunkett, John McGahern and Leontia Flynn, alongside lesser-known names from the earlier decades of the twentieth century, such as Ethna Carberry, Alice Milligan and George Reavey. The Wrong Country also portrays the changing cultural backgrounds of the author’s contemporaries, such as Thomas Kilroy, Derek Mahon, Colm Tóibín, Hugo Hamilton, Sinéad Morrissey and Michelle O’Sullivan.
272 pp
Gerald Dawe raises important
Gerald Dawe is an Irish poet and Professor Emeritus and Fellow, Trinity College Dublin. His recent poetry collections include Selected Poems (2012) and Mickey Finn’s Air (2014). He edited the Cambridge Companion to Irish Poets (2018) and has published several books of literary essays.
questions about cultural belonging, the commercialisation of contemporary writing and the influence of Irish literary culture in a digital age, to reposition our understanding of Irish writing in a wider context.
Contact for rights negotiations Conor Graham, Irish Academic Press, Tuckmill House, 10 George’s Street, Newbridge, Co. Kildare, Ireland irishacademicpress.ie / conor.graham@iap.ie +353 86 387 0991
64 | Non-fiction
Penguin Ireland / May 2018
ARNOLD THOMAS FANNING
MIND ON FIRE
275 pp
Homeless in London; manic and delusional at an artist’s retreat; suicidally depressed by railway tracks: Arnold Thomas Fanning’s bipolar disease brought him to these and other terrible places.
Arnold Thomas Fanning was born in London and raised in Dublin. His stage plays include the acclaimed McKenna’s Fort. Mind on Fire is his first book.
Drawing on his own memories, the recollections of people who knew him when he was at his worst, and medical and police records, Arnold Thomas Fanning has produced a beautifully written, devastatingly intense account of madness – and recovery, to the point where he has not had any serious illness for over a decade and has become an acclaimed playwright. In a remarkably vivid present-tense narrative, Fanning manages to convey the consciousness of a person living with mania, psychosis and severe depression.
Contact for rights negotiations Chantal Noel, Penguin Random House UK, 80 The Strand, WC2R 0RL, London, UK penguinrandomhouse.co.uk / cnoel@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk +44 20 7010 3127
Non-fiction | 65
Lilliput Press / October 2018
THOMAS KILROY
OVER THE BACKYARD WALL Over the Backyard Wall describes a coming of age embodied by escape, self-discovery and a struggle to contend with the rigid culture of a small Irish town in County Kilkenny during the Second World War, with parents representing both sides of the Civil War conflict of the 1920s. Kilroy describes encounters with fellow Kilkenny artists Tony O’Malley and Hubert Butler and writers such as Carson McCullers during his tour of the southern US states in the 1950s.
240 pp
In keeping with Kilroy’s previous works, Over the Backyard Wall utilises the silences of the past to liberate the imagination, making use of social and political history to reinvigorate the shard-like nature of his own narrative memory. Thomas Kilroy was born in Callan, Co. Kilkenny, and studied at University College Dublin. He was play editor at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. He became Professor of English at University College Galway. He is currently living in Mayo and is a member of the Royal Society of Literature, Aosdána and the Irish Academy of Letters.
Contact for rights negotiations The Lilliput Press, 62/63 Sitric Road, Dublin, D07 AE27, Ireland lilliputpress.ie / info@lilliputpress.ie +353 1 671 1647
66 | Non-fiction
Dalkey Archive Press / June 2018
MAEBH LONG (ED.)
THE COLLECTED LETTERS OF FLANN O’BRIEN
612 pp
An unprecedented gathering of the correspondence of one of the great writers of twentieth century, The Collected Letters of Flann O’Brien presents an intimate look into the life and thought of Brian O’Nolan, a prolific author of novels, stories, sketches and journalism who famously wrote and presented works to the reading public under a variety of pseudonyms. Spanning the years 1934 to 1966, these compulsively readable letters show us O’Nolan, or O’Brien, or Myles na gCopaleen – or whatever his name may be – at his most cantankerous and most intimate.
Maebh Long is a senior lecturer in the English programme at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Her principal areas of research and teaching are modernist and contemporary literature from Ireland, Britain and Oceania, especially literary theory and continental philosophy. She has published widely on Brian O’Nolan/ Flann O’Brien, and is the author of Assembling Flann O’Brien (2014).
Contact for rights negotiations Katrin Meyfarth, Dalkey Archive Press, Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, 36 Fenian Street, Dublin D02 CH22, Ireland dalkeyarchive.com / meyfarth@dalkeyarchive.com
Doubleday / August 2018
Non-fiction | 67
CONOR O’CLERY
THE SHOEMAKER AND HIS DAUGHTER
320 pp
The Soviet Union, 1962. Shoemaker Stanislav Suvorov is imprisoned for five years. His crime? Selling his car for profit, contravening the Kremlin’s strict laws of speculation – laws his daughter Zhanna will help to dismantle thirty years later. On his release, social shame drives the shoemaker and his family to voluntary exile in Siberia: for some, the capital of the Gulag; for others, the chance to start again.
Conor O’Clery holds a unique perspective on the former Soviet Union, as resident Irish Times correspondent during the last four years of Communism there and as a frequent visitor since then, having married into a Russian-Armenian family in Krasnoyarsk. He is the author of several books and was twice awarded Journalist of the Year for his dispatches from Moscow and for his reporting of the 9/11 attacks in New York.
The Shoemaker and His Daughter takes in eighty years of Soviet and Russian history, from Stalin to Putin, through the prism of a family Conor O’Clery knows well – he is married to Zhanna. Both intimate and sweeping in scale, this is a story of ordinary lives shaped by extraordinary times, and the triumph of the human spirit.
Contact for rights negotiations Jonathan Williams, John Williams Literary Agency, Rosney Mews, Upper Glenageary Road, Glenageary, Co. Dublin, Ireland janetta@eircom.net
68 | Non-fiction
Lilliput Press / January 2018
VALERIE PAKENHAM (ED.)
MARIA EDGEWORTH’S LETTERS FROM IRELAND
448 pp
1 January 2018 was the 250th anniversary of Maria Edgeworth’s birth. Valerie Pakenham’s sparkling new selection of over four hundred letters, many hitherto unpublished, celebrates her memory. Born in England, she was brought to live in Ireland at the age of fourteen and spent most of the rest of her life at the family home at Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford. A treasure trove of stories, humour and local and highlevel gossip, her letters show the extraordinary range of her interests: history, politics, literature and science.
Valerie Pakenham worked as a journalist in London at Condé Nast and the Daily Mail before her marriage to the writer Thomas Pakenham. She has lived near Maria Edgeworth’s old family home in Edgeworthstown, for over fifty years, and is familiar with many of the places described in these letters. The Pakenham and Edgeworth families intermarried in the early eighteenth century and were close friends across several generations.
Contact for rights negotiations The Lilliput Press, 62/63 Sitric Road, Dublin, D07 AE27, Ireland lilliputpress.ie / info@lilliputpress.ie +353 1 671 1647
Tramp Press / July 2018
Non-fiction | 69
EMILIE PINE
NOTES TO SELF In this vivid and powerful collection of essays, Emilie Pine writes about all the things she shouldn’t say. Addressing addiction, fertility, feminism, sexual violence and depression, Notes to Self is raw, funny and honest.
224 pp
Unsentimental and brave, this startling debut breaks new ground in the field of personal essays.
Emilie Pine is Associate Professor in Modern Drama at University College Dublin, Ireland. She has published widely on Irish culture, including reviews for RTÉ’s Arena, Irish Theatre Magazine and The Irish Times. Emilie has contributed to numerous academic publications, as well as to The Stinging Fly. She is editor of the Irish University Review. Notes to Self is her first collection of essays.
Contact for rights negotiations Sarah Davis-Goff, Tramp Press tramppress.com / sarah@tramppress.com
70 | Index of Authors
INDEX OF AUTHORS Bolger, Dermot Boran, Pat
6 37
Forde, Patricia
54
French, Tom
41
Boyce, Niamh
7
Fulham-McQuillan, Hugh
15
Boyne, John
8
Gallagher, Mia
16
Gilmartin, Sarah and Meade, Declan (eds)
17
Harper, James
42
Heaney, Seamus
43
Hughes, Caoilinn
18
Jenkinson, Rosemary
19
Kelly, John
44
Kilroy, Tom
65
Laird, Nick
45
Larkin, Paul
20
Leahy, Cethan
55
Long, Maebh (ed.)
66
Mahon, Derek
46
Martin, Emer
21
Mathews, Aidan
47
McCabe, Patrick
22
McGuinness, Frank
23
McNamee, Eoin
24
Breathnach, Gemma
49
Breathnach, Kevin
61
Breathnach, Pรกdraic
9
Burns, Anna
10
Carson, Jan
11
Colfer, Eoin
50
Conaghan, Brian
51
Connell, John
62
Crossan, Sarah
52
Cullen, Helen
12
Dawe, Gerald
63
Deane, John F.
38
Devlin, Sadhbh
53
Durkin, ร ine
39
Erskine, Wendy
13
Evans, Martina
40
Fanning, Arnold Thomas
64
Fennell, Jack (ed.)
14
Index of Authors Fiction | 71
INDEX OF AUTHORS Millar, Sam
25
Ní Ghríofa, Doireann
48
Nugent, Liz
26
O’Clery, Conor
67
O’Connor, Nuala
27
O’Donnell, Paraic
28
O’Donoghue, Caroline
29
O’Neill, Joseph
30
O’Neill, Louise
56
O’Rawe, Richard
31
Pakenham, Valerie (ed.)
68
Park, David
32
Pike, Charlie
57
Pine, Emilie
69
Quigley, Emma
58
Rooney, Sally
33
Ryan, Donal
34
Shortall, Eithne
35
Uí Fhoghlú, Áine
59
Wall, William
36
Watson, Mary
60
72 | Index of Titles
INDEX OF TITLES 100 Poems
43
Good Trouble
30
Against the Clock
46
Grace after Henry
35
Grace’s Day
36
Ark of Light, An
6
Beag Bídeach!
53
Heartland 22
Bank 58
Her Kind
Becoming Belle
27
House on Vesper Sands, The
28
Bespoke Hitman, The
25
Jacob’s Ladder
57
Brilliant Void, A: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction
14
Bumpfizzle the Best on Planet Earth 54 Catholic Boy
19
Collected Letters of Flann O’Brien, The
66
Cow Book, The: A Story of Life on an Irish Family Farm
62
Cruelty Men, The
21
Dear Pilgrims
38
Dialann Mo Mháthar
9
Dog That Lost His Bark, The
50
Éilis from the Flats
20
Feel Free
45
From a Low and Quiet Sea
34
Ladder to the Sky, A Last Straw, The
7
8 41
LabhairAmach.com (SpeakUp.com) 59 Lies 48 Lost Letters of William Woolf, The
12
Maria Edgeworth’s Letters from Ireland
68
Milkman 10 Mind on Fire
64
Mise Áine: An Bhean Istigh
39
Moonrise 52 Normal People
33
Northern Heist
31
Notes on Jackson and His Dead
15
Index ofFiction Titles | 73
INDEX OF TITLES Notes to Self
69
Vogue, The
24
Notions 44
Weight of a Thousand Feathers, The 51
Now We Can Talk Openly about Men
40
White Silhouette, The
42
Orchid and the Wasp
18
Wren Hunt, The
60
Over the Backyard Wall
65
Wrong Country, The: Essays on Modern Irish Writing
63
Paprika 23 Percy Péacóg
49
Promising Young Women
29
Shift 16 Shoemaker and His Daughter, The
67
Skin Deep
26
Stinging Fly Stories
17
Strictly No Poetry
47
Surface Breaks, The
56
Sweet Home
13
Taste for Fire, A
11
Then Again
37
Travelling in a Strange Land
32
Tuesdays Are Just as Bad
55
Tunnel Vision
61
74 | Index of Publishers
INDEX OF PUBLISHERS 4th Estate The News Building 1 London Bridge Street London, SE1 9GF United Kingdom 4thestate.co.uk 4thestate.marketing@ harpercollins.co.uk +44 20 8741 7070 Apollo Head of Zeus 5-8 Hardwick Street 1st Floor East London, EC1R 4RG United Kingdom apollo-classics.com +44 20 7253 5557 Bloomsbury Publishing 50 Bedford Square London, WC1B 3DP United Kingdom bloomsbury.com contact@bloomsbury. com +44 20 7631 5600 Carcanet Press 4th Floor, Alliance House 30 Cross Street Manchester, M2 7AQ United Kingdom carcanet.co.uk info@carcanet.co.uk +44 161 834 8730
ClĂł Iar-Chonnacht Inverin Co. Galway Ireland cic.ie rights@cic.ie +353 91 593 307 Corvus Atlantic Books Ormond House 26-27 Boswell Street London, WC1N 3JZ United Kingdom atlantic-books.co.uk enquiries@atlantic-books. co.uk +44 207 269 1610 Dalkey Archive Press Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation Trinity College Dublin 36 Fenian Street Dublin D02 CH22 Ireland Dalkeyarchive.com contact@dalkeyarchive. com
Dedalus Press 13 Moyclare Road Baldoyle Dublin D13 K1C2 Ireland dedaluspress.com editor@dedaluspress.com +353 1 839 2034 Doire Press Aille, Inverin Co. Galway Ireland doirepress.com doirepress@gmail.com +353 91 593 290 Faber and Faber Bloomsbury House 74–77 Great Russell Street London, WC1B 3DA United Kingdom faber.co.uk garights@faber.co.uk +44 20 7927 3800 Futa Fata Spiddal Co. Galway Ireland futafata.ie info@futafata.ie +353 91 504 612
Index of Publishers Fiction | 75
INDEX OF PUBLISHERS The Gallery Press Loughcrew Oldcastle Co. Meath Ireland gallerypress.com gallery@indigo.ie +353 49 854 1779 Granta Books 12 Addison Avenue London, W11 4QR United Kingdom grantabooks.com info@grantabooks.com +44 20 7605 1360 Irish Academic Press Tuckmill House 10 George’s Street Newbridge Co. Kildare Ireland irishacademicpress.ie info@iap.ie +353 45 432 497 The Lilliput Press 62–63 Sitric Road Dublin D07 AE27 Ireland lilliputpress.ie publicity@lilliputpress.ie +353 1 671 1647
Little Island 7 Kenilworth Park Dublin D6W XV34 Ireland littleisland.ie info@littleisland.ie +353 85 228 3060 Little, Brown Book Group Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London, EC4Y 0DZ United Kingdom littlebrown.co.uk info@littlebrown.co.uk +44 20 3122 7000 Mercier Press Unit 3B Oak House Bessboro Road Blackrock Cork Ireland mercierpress.ie info@mercierpress.ie +353 21 461 4700
New Island Books 16 Priory Office Park Stillorgan Road Blackrock Dublin A94 RH10 Ireland newisland.ie info@newisland.ie +353 1 278 4225 The O’Brien Press 12 Terenure Road East Rathgar Dublin D06 HD27 Ireland obrien.ie rights@obrien.ie +353 1 492 3333 Oneworld Publications 10 Bloomsbury Street London, WC1B 3SR United Kingdom oneworld-publications. com info@oneworldpublications.com +44 20 7307 8900
76 | Index of Publishers
INDEX OF PUBLISHERS Penguin Ireland 25 St Stephen’s Green Dublin D02 XF99 Ireland penguin.ie info@penguin.ie +353 1 661 7695
The Stinging Fly Press P.O. Box 6016 Dublin 1 Ireland stingingfly.org stingingfly@gmail.com +353 86 840 9133
Penguin UK 80 Strand London, WC2R ORL United Kingdom penguin.co.uk +44 20 7139 3000
Tramp Press tramppress.com info@tramppress.com
Scholastic Children’s Books Scholastic Ltd. Euston House 24 Eversholt Street London, NW1 1DB United Kingdom scholastic.co.uk contactus@scholastic. co.uk +44 20 7756 7756
Transworld Suites 47–51 Morrison Chambers 32 Nassau Street Dublin 2 Ireland +353 1 531 1450 Walker Books 87 Vauxhall Walk London, SE11 5HJ United Kingdom walker.co.uk email@walker.co.uk +44 20 7587 1123
Weidenfeld & Nicolson The Orion Publishing Group Orion House 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane London, WC2H 9EA United Kingdom orionbooks.co.uk rights.enquiries@ orionbooks.co.uk +44 20 7240 3444
Literature Ireland: Promoting and Translating Irish Writing Literature Ireland promotes Irish writing and writers internationally. It does this by awarding translation grants to publishers in other countries, by coordinating the participation of Irish writers at events and festivals around the world, by representing Irish writers at key international book fairs, and through its publications and translator residency programme.
Literature Ireland LitrĂocht Éireann Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation 36 Fenian Street Trinity College Dublin Dublin D02 CH22 Ireland +353 1 896 4184 literatureireland.com