What's Not Said
James Martyn Joyce
What’s Not Said
ISBN:
9781851320387 paperback
9781851320486 limited edition
James Martyn Joyce’s masterly, debut short fiction collection, What’s Not Said, draws a different kind of attention to the small world of land purchase, building and resentment entrenched in the Irish psyche. These interlinked stories are populated by skinny-denimed squirrels and sawn-off shotguns, where plasterers and electricians swarm over the shell of a house like fat flies cleaning out a carcass. With a gimlet eye he uncovers an Ireland of greed, betrayal and consequences with writing that is sharp, unsettling, lyrical, yet not without humour, throwing a spotlight on lives that fester behind the ordinary … where what he didn’t know couldn’t kick his door in at 4.00am and nail him to the bed with lead rivets. From the beautifully nuanced ‘Dust Woman’ to such disquieting examples as ‘Benny’s Case’, ‘What’s Not Said’ and ‘Give Them Nothing’, Joyce limns the shadow seam of Ireland with inference rather than statement, leaving the reader to search between the lines and bring into the light what’s not said, what can’t be said and even if it’s not said it always filters back. Now that’s what a good short story is all about’ – Geraldine Mills
‘With a few, sudden strokes he can sketch out a whole world … a stylish and startling debut’ – Mike McCormack
James Martyn Joyce is a poet and fiction writer from Galway. Winner of many awards for his writing, his debut poetry collection, Shedding Skin, was published by Arlen House in 2010. What’s Not Said is his debut short fiction collection.
Snow Shoes
Eileen Casey
Snow Shoes
ISBN:
9781851320424 paperback
9781851320523 limited edition
‘Rooted in the quotidian – a supermarket, a travelling salesman, a couple on a beach holiday – but full of wisdom, humanity and sly humour. It may be the title of one of her stories, but Eileen Casey is herself The Genuine Article’
– Deirdre Madden
‘Macaw is a story that vividly, yet with tremendous subtlety and control, describes the tension between a teenage daughter’s burgeoning sexuality and a mother’s coming to terms with a terrible secret’
– Derek Johns, Hennessy Literary Award Judge
Eileen Casey is a fiction writer, poet and journalist originally from the Midlands and now living in Tallaght, Co. Dublin. Her debut poetry collection, Drinking the Colour Blue, was published by New Island in 2008. Her fiction and prose awards include: the 2010 Irish Independent/Hennessy Literary Award in Emerging Fiction, the South Tipperary Festival Prize, Listowel Writers’ Week Short Fiction Award, the Maria Edgeworth Fiction Award, the Cecil Day Lewis Award and the Golden Pen Prize. She holds a BA (Hons) in Humanities from Dublin City University and in 2012 graduated with distinction from the M.Phil in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin.
Somewhere in Minnesota
Órfhlaith Foyle
Somewhere in Minnesota
ISBN:
9781851320301 paperback
9781851320325 hardback
Órfhlaith Foyle’s stories of human love and need portray not only the darker layers of humanity, but also its craving to belong to someone and somewhere; to have a history, a present and the dream of a future.
Her characters are driven by their own demons. Sometimes there is redemption, yet, even if there is none, Órfhlaith Foyle’s characters at least know that they have come close.
‘Órfhlaith Foyle’s strange stories of violence and yearning beguile the reader even as they disconcert. She is a true original, a writer of great gifts, and I find her work immensely compelling and memorable’ − Joseph O’Connor
Órfhlaith Foyle was born in Nigeria to Irish parents and now lives in Galway. Her first novel, Belios, was published in 2005 by The Lilliput Press to critical acclaim. The same year Arlen House published Revenge, a collection of her short fiction and poetry. Her début poetry collection, Red Riding Hood’s Dilemma (Arlen House, 2010) was short-listed for the Rupert and Eithne Strong First Poetry Collection Award in 2011. This is her début short fiction collection.
The Wind Across The Grass
Nuala Ní Chonchúir
The Wind Across the Grass
ISBN:
This new edition of Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s debut short fiction collection presents 22 stories (including 4 new), exploring themes of adult-child relationships, death and violence, and the Irish sense of place. These are essential stories about families and relationships under strain: there is love and betrayal, sickness and passing, humour and rivalry, all told in a mix of adult and child voices, each voice as honest as the last.
‘… a gifted and ambitious artist, with a delicate feel for the accuracies and narrow tolerances of the short story’.
− Mike McCormack
‘Nuala Ní Chonchúir epitomises the poet/writer who uses the intensity of her poetry skills in prose to produce, in The Wind Across the Grass, sensualist microcosms of love, life and love gone astray. Here is a sharp but compassionate eye that can make us believe that these strange and wonderful characters breathe, hope and suffer … A good writer, like any good artist, should perturb and make us think. So, with this criteria, she fully deserves all accolades accorded to her’.
− Julia Bohanna, The Short Review
‘… one of Ireland’s most unusual and creative minds; her fiction is dressed in modernity, a ritual playing of the bones of Irish storytelling’.
Andrew Lovatt, Dead Drunk Dublin
‘She is a real writer’.
− Jeremy Addis, Books Ireland
‘Ní Chonchúir’s work is both sensual and provocative … she bares her soul and examines the world around her in visceral and challenging ways’.
− Marc Schuster, Small Press Reviews
‘Look for some big things to come from Galway’s Ní Chonchúir. She has such a diversity of work and can say so much in just a few words that it’s obvious she’s also an award-winning poet. Her stories are filled with very astute observations, some humorous, some sad’.
− The Readerville Journal
‘A bright and fresh collection of short stories exploring the promises and disappointments of love and relationships, this is a slightly and delightfully irreverent book full of female sensitivity and humour’.
− Des Kenny
‘Ní Chonchúir has a deft word-touch and is imaginative and resourceful with poetic ideas. Her work is vital and often funny and quirky, with a punchy diligence’.
− Fred Johnston, Kiosque
‘She has a modern irreverent sensibility’.
− Nessa O’Mahony, Poetry Ireland Review
‘There is passion, mythology and raw human experience. Reading Nuala Ní Chonchúir, you learn that your life is reflected in what she sees. It is this quiet invading honesty of her words that makes her writing real’.
− Órfhlaith Foyle, The Galway Advertiser
‘There is bright assessment here as Nuala Ní Chonchúir deftly sketches in her surroundings. Then emotions sweep in, deeper, unsettling. But confidence and intelligence are central in all of her writing, creating a safety net. She searches like a lighthouse, picking out the unusual’.
− Pat Jourdan, Women’s Studies Review
Nuala Ní Chonchúir was born in Dublin in 1970 and lives in County Galway. Her poetry was first anthologised as Molly’s Daughter in the first Arlen House ¡DIVAS! New Irish Women’s Writing collection in 2003. Her debut poetry collection, Tattoo ¦ Tatú (Arlen House, 2007) was shortlisted for the Strong Award. Her short fiction collections, The Wind Across the Grass (2004) and To the World of Men, Welcome (2005), were published by Arlen House, and in 2005 she edited the second ¡DIVAS! New Irish Women’s Writing anthology, ‘A Sense of Place’. Her third short fiction collection, Nude, was published by Salt in the UK in 2009. Nuala has won many short fiction prizes, including the inaugural Cúirt New Writing Prize, RTÉ’s Francis MacManus Award, the inaugural Jonathan Swift Award and the Cecil Day Lewis Award. She was chosen by The Irish Times as one of the ‘People to Watch in 2009’. In 2020 she published Birdie (Arlen House), a collection of flash fiction, and in 2021, Nora was released to international acclaim.
Psychotic Episodes
Alan McMonagle
Psychotic Episodes
ISBN:
9781851320530
Available from
Limited Edition
available from Arlen House
[wpecpp name=”Psychotic Episodes – Limited Edition” price=”20.00″]
A troubled boy convinces himself he can fly.
An old crone decides to turn herself into a man.
Two adolescents make an unusual list of ideal women.
A childless couple are given their little nephew for the day.
The players in these humorously anxious stories are separate, apart from the mainstream; their lot being a slow awareness that they may not be able to control the confusing extensions to the landscapes they inhabit. Skewed comedy, absurd perspectives and stretched realities abound as members of this misplaced assortment grapple for their place in the scheme of things.
In these stories, which are precise, tender and glitteringly compelling, Alan McMonagle reveals himself as a writer of the first order. McLaverty comes to mind but, make no mistake, McMonagle is his own man. Readers should pay close attention to him.
– Patrick McCabe
Sentence to story with sudden grace and sharp wit – McMonagle is the real thing!
– Mike McCormack
Alan McMonagle was born in Sligo, grew up in Longford and now lives in Galway. He has received awards for his work from the Professional Artists’ Retreat in Yaddo (New York), the Fundación Valparaiso (Spain), the Banff Centre for Creativity (Canada) and The Arts Council (Ireland). His stories have appeared in many journals in Ireland and North America including The Adirondack Review, The Valparaiso Fiction Review, Natural Bridge, Grain, Prairie Fire, Southword and The Stinging Fly. Liar Liar (Wordsonthestreet), his first collection of stories appeared in 2008 and was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award in 2009. The title story of this collection, Psychotic Episodes, was nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize.
Hugging Thistles
Aideen Henry
Hugging Thistles
ISBN:
9781851320479 paperback
Hugging Thistles is an apt title for this collection of stories: with a hidden dignity and quiet resignation, Aideen Henry’s lonely, lovelorn and sometimes dysfunctional characters cling to the thorny vine of life in the forlorn hope of finding that delicate thing called happiness … a great achievement by a rare and unique talent.
– Billy Roche
Aideen Henry writes with jagged rhythms, full of minute and wonderful surprises. Her prose is always a powerful and gripping track to the heart of the matter. In the world of the Irish short story her voice is both exciting and refreshing.
– Michael Harding
These stories, sharp and pitiless but beautifully made, lay bare the world as it is. They are a disquieting but chastening read.
– Carlo Gébler
A boy loses his mother to a goat. Someone always knows about the local molester. It’s part of the flock memory. A woman visits the bail bond office to whisper her worst nightmare and run away. A man cuts off his own penis to escape toxic sensory experiences. A young mother’s life is ruled by her unreachable sadness.
The stories in Hugging Thistles deal with the interior worlds of intense, multi-layered characters. They struggle with matters that are often unspeakable, and the powerful paradoxical emotions that emerge control their lives.
Hugging Thistles marks Aideen Henry’s stunning short fiction debut.
Aideen Henry writes short fiction, drama and poetry. Her short stories, ‘Saibh’ and ‘Idling’, were shortlisted for the Francis MacManus Award in 2011 and 2012. ‘Idling’ was published in The Dublin Review in 2012. She has contributed short stories to three published collections of the Atlantis Collective. Her three one-act plays were staged at NUI, Galway and the Galway Theatre Festival. Her debut poetry collection, Hands Moving at the Speed of Falling Snow, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2010 and that year she was shortlisted for the Emerging Poetry Section of the Hennessy Literary Awards. Hugging Thistles is her debut collection of short stories.
Clemency Browne Dreams of Gin
Órfhlaith Foyle
Clemency Browne Dreams of Gin
ISBN:
9781851321094 – paperback
9781851321100 – hardback
Clemency Browne Dreams of Gin is Órfhlaith Foyle’s second short fiction collection. Her other books from Arlen House are Somewhere in Minnesota(2011, short fiction), Revenge (2005, short fiction and poetry) and Red Riding Hood’s Dilemma (2010, poetry), which was shortlisted for the Strong Award. Her debut novel is Belios (The Lilliput Press, 2005). Born in Africa to Irish parents, Órfhlaith now lives in Galway.
“Mr Olson has three children. Sometimes they come to the asylum and look at us. They prefer the ones who are madder than I am. The ones who don’t wash and the ones who scoot naked on the ground like monkeys, and trail their female blood so that Mr Olson’s children giggle and dance.
Once I touched Mr Olson’s youngest boy. He was barely six. When he looked at me, I thought his blue eyes turned like wheels inside his head. They had grey spokes. They turned and I screamed.
Men beat me after that.”
Birdie
Nuala O’Connor
Birdie
ISBN: 9781851322626
Love is the central force in Birdie, a collection of sixteen historical and out-of-time flash fictions that sing with the voices of women loving and losing and learning. The characters here find strength, despite the sorrows of death and deceit: a ghost-child returns to Massachusetts to comfort her grieving mother; the daughter of a Spanish orange tycoon regrets her mother’s terrible choices; an English maid longs for, but can’t be with, her mistress’s son.
Birdie contains Nuala O’Connor’s signature ekphrastic work, drawing on artists as diverse as Matisse, da Vinci, and American painter Edwin Romanzo Elmer. The natural world looms large too: sheep and foxes roam these pages, as much as seawater washes through them.
Described by the Toronto Star as a writer of ‘magical imagination’ and by the Washington Post as ‘soaring’, O’Connor’s collection of historical flash will delight her readers, old and new.
Nuala O’Connor lives in County Galway, Ireland. In 2019 she won the James Joyce Quarterly competition to write the missing story from Dubliners, ‘Ulysses’. Her fourth novel, Becoming Belle, was published to critical acclaim in 2018 in Ireland, the UK, the USA and Canada. Her new book, Nora, published in 2021, is a bio-fictional novel about Nora Barnacle, wife and muse to James Joyce. Nuala has published five collections of short fiction, including the flash chapbook, Of Dublin and Other Fictions. She is editor-in-chief at flash e-zine Splonk. She has won many flash and short fiction awards including the Dublin Review of Books Flash Fiction Prize, The Gladstone Flash Prize, RTÉ’s Francis MacManus Award, the Cúirt New Writing Prize, the inaugural Jonathan Swift Award, and the Cecil Day Lewis Award. She was shortlisted for the European Prize for Literature.