Oct
11
2023
 

The Lilliput Press is seeking a Publishing Manager on a 12 month contract, renewable annually subject to review with the Publisher and Board. The successful candidate will have suitable experience in a book publishing environment, preferably in a project management or coordination role, and must be able to hit the ground running.  Essential Criteria  Third-level qualification in publishing, literature or a related field. Demonstrated experience in a book publishing environment in a project management, office management, coordination or administration role (min. 2 years’ experience) Proficient mathematical and computational skills with experience in setting and managing budgets Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail Experience in problem-solving and decision-making Strong editorial and proofreading skills and ability…

Mar
11
2022
 

Join Lilliput Press for the launch of The Geometer Lobachevsky, the highly-anticipated new novel from award-winning author Adrian Duncan. 6PM, Thursday, 31 March, 2022, at Hodges Figgis. Greg Baxter will be the guest speaker on the evening. We look forward to welcoming you all! Book your Free Ticket here.   When I was sent by the Soviet state to London to further my studies in calculus, knowing I would never become a great mathematician, I strayed instead into the foothills of anthropology … Nikolai Lobachevsky, mathematician, surveyor and great-grandson of his illustrious namesake, arrives in Ireland to lend his expertise to the new Republic, helping Bord na Móna to survey a bog in the Midlands….

Dec
06
2021
 

I spent five years in China. I am no longer expecting to return.  While it seems like barriers to travel – these and a hundred signs say that the country is turning inwards, preparing for some other surprise – will keep casual travellers away for another two years, something more has been broken in me and people like me. One of the strangest inflections of the pandemic for me has been to realize that the virus, however it became a world-plague, likely came from a rainforest in which I briefly stayed. The Mojiang mine, whatever its place in the calamity, was just a few kilometres from where I was working.  Flashing images of the biology…

A Yeats Journey by Joseph M. Hassett author of Yeats Now published by The Lilliput Press
Nov
25
2021
 

I was bitten by the Yeats bug at the fourth annual Yeats Summer School in Sligo, Ireland, in 1963. The opening ceremony in neighbouring Drumcliff Church was magical. Even a fledgling student knew the ringing lines in which Yeats declared, Under bare Ben Bulben’s head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid. An ancestor was rector there… I could not have foreseen that fifty-six years later I would have the honour of delivering the opening address at the sixtieth Yeats Summer School to an audience at Drumcliff Church that included the great-great-great-granddaughters of the ancestor referred to in Yeats’s poem, Reverend John Yeats, who was Rector at Drumcliff from 1811 to 1846. The feeling that night…

Oct
08
2021
 

Irish publishing takeover at Cheltenham Literature Festival 2021   For the first time, the Lilliput Press and New Island Books have made the historic move of bringing a showcase of Irish-published literary talent – the Shebeen Series – to The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival 2021 as a representation of the industry and the best of Irish writing.   With the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland, and in partnership with the Cheltenham Literature Festival, this exciting event sees two of Ireland’s most prestigious and long-standing publishers join together to take over a stage for a full afternoon at the world’s oldest literature festival. Irish publishing houses have never before been…

Jan
20
2021
 

I am American, but I lived in China for eight years, in Shanghai and Kunming. Kunming is the capital of Yunnan, a mountainous province that is home to the China side of the Old Silk Road and where the people often said:     天高皇帝远 Tiān gāo, huángdì yuan Heaven is high and the emperor is far away   My time in Yunnan was memorable but brief. The lion’s share of those years in China was lived in Shanghai. Shanghai, 上海 (Above Sea; Upon the Sea): a city that is both sinking and flooding – expected to be underwater by 2050.   I write this from California where fires of a season like no other in history are still burning and lockdown orders are the strictest since spring. 1. ~Space~ Cicadas  Dew-rinsed: their pure notes carry far. Windblown: as dry, fasting leaves are blown.  Chirr after chirr, as if in unison. But each perches on…

Oct
19
2020
 

 A billion balconies facing the sun; still, it means a final goodbye to wars and ideologies…   JG Ballard, Cocaine Nights, (1996)  XI Hails a Historic Free Trade Move / APEC summit endorses route to promote economic integration in Asia-Pacific  The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit yesterday opened a route toward a vast free trade area in the region, host Xi Jinping said, calling it a historic step…   Besides accounting for more than fifty percent of the world’s gross domestic product, 21-member APEC also makes up nearly half of world trade and 40 percent of the Earth’s population. The APEC leaders also endorsed a proposal to work more closely to combat official corruption, Xi said.  Shanghai Daily, cover story, Wednesday 12…

Oct
12
2020
 

Chimney Blown Up  A 206-metre high chimney owned by Baosteel was blown up on Monday. The structure was the tallest ever to have been blown up in Asia. The chimney, which weighed 1,500 tons, took just two minutes to demolish. The structure was demolished because it was no longer needed.  Shanghai Daily, Metro section, Wednesday 5 November 2014  1. Babylon: Shanghai 2014  Years ago I walked into the Pergamon museum in Berlin. I entered a room and looked up at the Ishtar gate. The effect it had was made up of conflicting feelings and a posture, as I scanned the images on the bricks and the archway. I leaned back and kept staring. I wanted to approach it and to go through it – and to keep a distance at the…

Jul
15
2020
 

Post-China Post 2 By 鲁科 It was August in 2015. I had been in the country a year. The apartment I lived in with two flatmates had a long, curving balcony, hugging half our shared space like a visor around a face. From it we looked out at a nightscape of southwest Shanghai, at many lights and different neighbourhoods, but few landmarks. A pair of towers in Xuhui that were nicknamed the ‘Lipsticks’ could be seen from it, but little else that you could put a name to. It was almost irresistible to smoke there. Cigarettes costing nothing, we would leave packs on the loose marble shelf with lighters, and indiscriminately take from them. This…

Adrian Duncan Author Photo
Jun
29
2020
 

The University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies is delighted to announce that the winner of the inaugural £5,000 John McGahern Annual Book Prize is Adrian Duncan, for his novel, Love Notes from a German Building Site. The Prize judges – University Vice-Chancellor Dame Professor Janet Beer; Chancellor and author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín; Professor of Irish literature in English, Frank Shovlin; and The Irish Times fiction reviewer, Sarah Gilmartin – praised the “pitch perfect debut” for its “spare, exact prose”, and how it reveals “what it might mean to be Irish in the 21st Century”. On learning of his success, Adrian Duncan said: “I am very moved and proud to be awarded this wonderful…