The much-acclaimed Irish author of Small Things Like These on her quietly devastating new story and why George Saunders wouldn’t read it aloud for a podcastClaire Keegan’s five books to date run to just 700 pages and some 140,000 words. “I love to see prose being written economically,” she tells me. “Elegance is saying just enough. And I do believe that the reader completes the story.” Revered by critics and prize judges for the miraculous density of her short fiction ever since her 1999 debut, Antarctica, she became an international bestseller two years ago with her first novel, Small Things Like These, about an Irish coal merchant whose eyes are opened one Christmas to the horror behind the walls of his biggest customer, a laundry run by nuns. “I think the book was taking off before it was shortlisted for the Booker prize,” Keegan, speaking from her home on the Wexford coast after technology thwarts our planned video call. “A lot of the sales went through word of mouth. A lot of people bought the book for other people for Christmas. People read it and bought it for other people in the new year. Now it’s on the school syllabus here.”The novel, which won last year’s Orwell prize for political fiction, takes its epigraph from the 1916 proclamation of the Irish republic, pledging “equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens”, a damning prelude to a book about systematised misogyny. Keegan’s new book, So Late in the Day, a 64-page story published as a standalone... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2023-09-02 17:00:10 UTC ]
Written in 2004 and auctioned for charity, Serpentine sees an adult Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon revisit Trollesund in search of secretsA previously unseen His Dark Materials story about a teenage Lyra, written by Philip Pullman over a decade ago and that he never intended to publish, will be... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-07-08 23:01:46 UTC ]
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Irish author Christine Dwyer Hickey has won the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for her “masterpiece” The Narrow Land (Atlantic), exploring the marriage of artists Edward and Jo Hopper. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-14 12:10:56 UTC ]
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News and Events The Editors of WLT From left to right, prose winner Jamie Lauer and writer Pía Barros, poetry winner Russell Karrick, poet Lucía Estrada. Jamie Lauer and Russell Karrick recently were named as the recipients of the third annual... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-05-18 13:29:17 UTC ]
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Costa award-winning love story of Connell and Marianne takes top slot from David Walliams’ bestselling children’s book SlimeSally Rooney’s Normal People has flown to the top of the UK’s book charts more than two years after it was published, thanks to the release of the TV adaptation starring... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-05-13 15:44:19 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Natalia Lomaia Left: Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal in Normal People (2020) / Courtesy of IMDB Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel is a meticulous observation, or even a study, of how one human being can have immense, intense power over another.... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-04-23 13:18:03 UTC ]
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Hachette Books Ireland has acquired two books by Irish author and journalist Emily Hourican who was inspired by the real-life story of the Guinness founder's daughters. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-04-09 12:27:08 UTC ]
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The University of East Anglia (UEA) has announced a major strand of its ambitious CW50 anniversary campaign, which celebrates 50 years of creative writing at UEA. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-04-01 15:44:04 UTC ]
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Conversations with Friends will follow Rooney’s Normal People that will air in April The BBC has commissioned a 12-part series based on Sally Rooney’s hit debut novel Conversations with Friends in the hope that fans of the young Irish author will bring in younger audiences.The BBC is to show its... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-02-25 10:19:05 UTC ]
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A decade ago, if you had picked up our first issue of the year, you’d have been greeted with the headline, “‘Things can only get better,’ says trade”. This week’s New Year’s predictions from our leaders and do-ers (see pp14–16) might have produced something slightly less pollyannaish—“Things... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-01-10 03:09:01 UTC ]
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Good news, lovers of brooding Irish actors and tragicomic literary noir: Michael Fassbender—the Academy Award-nominated Hiberno-German star of Inglourious Basterds, Shame, and the latest incarnation of the X-Men movies—has optioned the film rights to Night Boat to Tangier, Irish author Kevin... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-12-18 17:38:18 UTC ]
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Eighty-eight-year-old Irish author Edna O’Brien has won the £40,000 David Cohen Prize for Literature for having “broken down social and sexual barriers for women in Ireland and beyond and moved mountains both politically and lyrically through her writing”. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-11-26 18:17:47 UTC ]
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From meditations on the d/Deaf experience to short stories blurring the mythic and the gothic with the everyday, from mixing the personal and political to a young woman uncover the truth about her family’s past – four outstanding writers have today been named on the shortlist for The Sunday... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-11-04 12:55:09 UTC ]
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Since its launch a decade ago, the submission management platform has spread its wings. (Sponsored) Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-09-23 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Publicist and debut children's author Liz Hyder calls on publishers to be more vocal about the negative impacts of creative writing being sidelined by the current education system. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-09-08 17:32:31 UTC ]
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Dublin-born Naoise Dolan and fellow Irish author Molly Aitken are among the most hotly tipped début authors for 2020; here they discuss the inspiration behind their first novels. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-07-18 23:44:32 UTC ]
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Independent publisher Everything with Words has acquired world English rights to Elsetime, a middle-grade debut by Irish author Eve McDonnell. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-07-16 01:32:37 UTC ]
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Nearly a decade ago, Lisa Taddeo signed a book deal with Simon & Schuster to write about desire in America. Taddeo was on a hot streak: She was writing regularly for Esquire, New York, and other publications, including a reported fictional first-person piece told from the point of view of... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2019-07-09 15:59:45 UTC ]
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Authors who write about marginalised communities are facing abuse, boycotts and even death threats. What is cancel culture doing to young adult fiction?Earlier this month, the author and screenwriter Gareth Roberts announced that his story was being removed from a forthcoming Doctor Who... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-06-15 08:00:15 UTC ]
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“We call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other,” explains Samantha Heather Mackey, the narrator of Mona Awad’s new novel, “Bunny.” “Seriously. Bunny. … Bunny, I love you. I love you, Bunny.” Awad does so many things right in “Bunny,” her follow-up to her 2016 debut novel,... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-06-11 15:00:00 UTC ]
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This week: new books from Clive Cussler and Jennifer Weiner, plus a very creepy novel about a creative writing M.F.A. program. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-06-07 04:00:00 UTC ]
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