Elske Rahill’s new short story collection In White Ink has been causing ripples in the literary community and beyond.   About In White Ink: Motherhood, nurture and violence – these are the themes of Elske Rahill’s remarkable first collection, In White Ink. Rahill brings to life the psychological and physical reality of mothering, pregnancy and childbirth in ways that few others writers have attempted. Here is a biting realism, in the relations between men and women and in the expectations and failures of their assigned roles. Each story is illumined by moments of harsh poetry. They are carefully crafted snapshots of our condition. In the title story, an isolated young mother is locked in to…

The Lilliput Press is open this weekend. We will be at the Made in Stoneybatter Christmas Market on 16 and 17 December 2017. Make sure to come and see all the wonderful stalls, and get some great deals on books before Christmas!  

Make sure you get your book orders in in time for Christmas! Last order dates: Republic of Ireland: 19th December Northern Ireland: 18th December UK: 16th December Europe: 11th December The Rest of the World: 6th December    

We’ve compiled a list of our favourite books for history enthusiasts if you’re trying to think presents this Christmas. Have a look at these and other fantastic books at https://www.lilliputpress.ie/.   Maria Edgeworth’s Letters from Ireland, ed. Valerie Pakenham January 1 2018 will be the 250th anniversary of Maria Edgeworth’s birth. Valerie Pakenham’s sparkling new selection of over four hundred letters, many hitherto unpublished, will help to celebrate her memory. Dating from 1825, Maria’s letters reflect sixty years of Irish history, from the heady days of Grattan’s Parliament, through the perils of the 1798 Rebellion to the rise of O’Connell and the struggle for Catholic Emancipation. In old age, she worked actively to alleviate the…

    Four years ago, in this same venue, I attended the launch of Elske Rahill’s debut novel, Between Dog and Wolf. I bought a copy, took it home, and read it over the next couple of days. When I was no more than a few pages in, my unease began to deepen in tandem with my fascination. Here, I realised, was a writer who would not spare my feelings – in other words, here was the very kind of writer I veer towards. Rahill’s novel plunged the reader without filter or protection into the loveless sex lives and interpersonal cruelties of students at loose in Dublin city. By the time I finished it, I…

An abridged version of Luke Gibbons’ speech at the launch of ‘Nobody’s Business’: The Aran Diaries of Ernie O’Malley edited by Cormac O’Malley and Róisín Kennedy […] You could argue that Ernie always kept his cards close to his chest, even when writing his diaries because one of the first things that strikes when reading these, as Róisín mentioned, is the forthright speaking and trenchant observations could not have seen the light of day in their own time. Ernie was taken to court On Another Man’s Wound and he was involved in a liable case. He certainly would have been involved in many a liable case with the content you see in the diaries. As…

  Dublin Book Festival starts this week with lots of wonderful events to look forward to. Come to the launch of In White Ink and Rise Above! Letters from Tyrone Guthrie, and don’t miss Caroline Preston in conversation about her debut novel This Tumult. Another highlight of the festival will be Valerie Pakenham talking about Maria Edgeworth and her newest book Maria Edgeworth’s Letters from Ireland on a panel of Ireland’s Notable Women.   BOOK LAUNCH In White Ink by Elske Rahill GUEST SPEAKER: Rob Doyle Elske Rahill’s remarkable stories are sustained by the experience of motherhood and bring the psychological and physical reality of pregnancy, childbirth, mothering and nurture alive in ways that few writers…

What Happened to God’s Policemen All of that by way of introduction to William King’s new novel A Lost Tribe, which charts the role of the priest in Ireland, from his exalted position to one of endangered species. King, who’s a Dublin parish priest and a prolific novelist – this is his fifth novel in two decades -brings the memories of almost fifty years of priesthood and an impressive writing style to his best novel to date. The main character is Fr Tom Galvin who, coming towards the end of his life and on a retreat in his old seminary, remembers the old church he knew, the hopes he had entertained, the realities he had…

An abridged version of Charles Lysaght’s speech at Adrian Kenny’s launch. I am honoured to be invited to launch this reissue by Lilliput Press (with relatively minor additions) of a book entitled Before the Wax Hardened written by my friend Adrian Kenny and first published a quarter of a century ago. Of its many fine features the finest is its honesty. It is an intrusion of honesty into a notoriously dishonest genre of literature – autobiography. Autobiographies or memoirs are so often exercises in public relations written by the successful and would-be successful painting a sympathetic picture of themselves with a few discreet boasts. It may be that most people are happy not to have…