Lit Review | 113 | Leonard Cohen’s New Book, Waterford Writers Weekend & Novel Fair
The Lit Review – your round up of all things literati.
News
Leonard Cohen’s New Book of Poetry
The Flame – a book of Leonard Cohen’s unpublished work and final poems is to be published next year by Canongate. According to Canongate, Cohen had chosen and ordered the poems in the months before his death in November 2016. Cohen’s manager and trustee of his estate Robert Kory told The Guardian, “During the final months of his life, Leonard had a singular focus – completing this book, taken largely from his unpublished poems and selections from his notebooks. The flame and how our culture threatened its extinction was a central concern.” The Flame will be published in October 2018.
Sarah Davis-Goff Book Deal
Sarah Davis-Goff, co-founder of the highly successful Tramp Press, has signed a two-book deal with Tinder Press for her manuscript, Last Ones Left Alive. The novel takes place in a post-apocalyptic Ireland. Tinder Press Publisher Mary-Anne Harrington described it as “a book that just seized me, in an almost visceral way… but it’s a book that’s haunted me, too, with its terrifying vision of a society in which women are offered only the starkest of choices in terms of their destiny. It’s also gorgeously written, with a unique voice and characters to love”. The second novel will be a companion piece set in the same world and featuring some of the same characters. Tinder Press will publish Last Ones Left Alive in hardback in January 2019.
Female Lines
Edited by Linda Anderson & Dawn Miranda Sherratt-Bado and published by New Island Books, Female Lines: New Writing by Women from Northern Ireland is due for release on October 18th. The anthology includes both experienced and new writers, and features writers playing with different modes, forms, and innovations – from magical realism and surrealism to humour and multi-perspective narratives – and celebrates fiction, poetry, drama, essays, life writing, and photography. It is a meditation on what has changed or stayed the same in terms of scope and opportunity for women writers and for women more generally in Northern Irish society since the Good Friday Agreement. The anthology features work by: Lucy Caldwell, Ruth Carr, Jan Carson, Medbh McGuckian, Janice Fitzpatrick Simmons and many other fantastic writers.
Events
Waterford Writers Weekend is kicking off on Friday 20th of October, loads of fantastic writers including Paul Howard, Sally Rooney, Dave Lordan, Dave Rudden and many more will be in the south east for what promises to be great festival. Be sure to sample a blaa if you go, its best paired with a bag of Tayto!
Annemarie Ní Churreáin’s debut poetry collection Bloodroot, published by Doire Press is being launched in the James Joyce Centre on 35 North Great George’s Street at 6:30 on Thursday the 26th of October. There will be an introduction by poet Thomas McCarthy and performance by the fantastic Landless.
The Irish Writers Centre is hosting their first bilingual open mic Tóg an Mic on Friday 27 October, bringing an Irish language focus to their monthly open-mic sessions. Hosted by Eoin Ó Murchú with guest Dairena Ní Chinnéide, this is a chance to perform and hear some fantastic work from both Irish and English language writers. Writers abú!
Dedalus Press and Poetry Ireland are launching two new poetry collections – Hymn to the Reckless by Erin Fornoff and Transmissions by Elaine Cosgrove on Friday October 27th at 7pm in Poetry Ireland, 11 Parnell Square East.
Submissions & Competitions
The deadline for the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2018 is 5pm on Friday 20th October. Entrants need to submit the first 10,000 words of their novel. Described by The Irish Times as a ‘Dragon’s Den for writers’, the Novel Fair is an Irish Writers Centre initiative which aims to introduce up-and-coming writers to top publishers and literary agents, giving novelists the opportunity to bypass the slush pile, pitch their ideas and place their synopsis and sample chapters directly into the hands of publishers and agents. Previous Novel Fair success stories include – Janet E. Cameron’s novel Cinnamon Toast published by Hachette and Kevin Curran’s Beatsploitation published Liberties Press.
