The FT Books pages looking good this morning… and the Irish Times not too shabby either 🙏

Devotions officially launched! Thank you so much to all who came to the Crescent Arts Centre to celebrate, to David and No Alibis for the books, and Alex Clark for the consummate chairing!

Devotions is published next week - here are some of the upcoming UK/Ire tour dates!

London friends, a couple of upcoming events for Devotions! Hope to see you there.

I wrote an essay about my early life in Irish books for SJPLit’s Substack. You can read it here! sjplit.substack.com/p/from-bront...

🕯️New episode with @lucycaldwell.bsky.social is out now! It’s not often I’m left speechless, but Lucy’s capacity to meditate on life, love, and death had me grasping for words We were speaking about DEVOTIONS ahead of next week’s release @faberbooks.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/r...

Belfast friends, if you’d like to come to the launch of Devotions at the Crescent on Mon 20 April, the link to reserve your free ticket is below! I’ll be in conversation with the inestimable Alex Clark, and we’ll also be launching this year’s festival programme ✨ crescentarts.org/events/devot...

I'm happy to have contributed an essay to @efacis.bsky.social Kaleidoscope project on Irish spirituality - honouring my RE teacher Miss Williams, who, like Miss Jean Brodie, led us out rather than shutting us in… kaleidoscope3.efacis.eu/publications...

Devotions is out in just 2 months! If you’d like to preorder a copy @waterstones.bsky.social are running a 25% promotion from today 17 Feb- midnight 20 Feb, just enter FEB26 at the checkout. I’ve also been signing lots of pretty candle bookplates for your local indie preorders!

I’m thrilled to be able to share this with you! My fourth collection, Devotions, will be published next April 23rd. If you would like a proof copy please contact @faberbooks.bsky.social ✨

One last-minute space for this - starting next Thursday! ✨

My @faberacademy.bsky.social autumn course on the short story is now open for booking! Places go fast and are limited so do take a look if you’re interested. Hope to see you there! faberacademy.com/product/shor...

Some pics from Faber’s rooftop event to mark the p’bk of Openings! In conversation with my long-term editor Angus Cargill. This new edition turns out to go beautifully with high blue skies. 📸 2 & 3 by Tracy Zinsou

Next Friday lunchtime at @faberbooks.bsky.social HQ! Rooftop, drinks, short stories - bliss. If you’re in London, come along!

Come and read & write short stories with me! Booking for my @faberacademy.bsky.social autumn masterclass series will open shortly but you need to be on the waiting list to have a chance of a place, so contact them to register your interest now. Hope to see you there!

This year’s Belfast Book Festival was just brilliant. Here are some highlights! Celebrating @wednesdayerskin.bsky.social, in conv. with Tessa Hadley, in conv. with Sam McAlister & Lucia Osborne-Crowley and plenty of @jancarsonwrites.bsky.social time!

On this morning's #sundaymiscellany 8 June 2025 Ways of Seeing: live at Belfast Book Festival at the Crescent Arts Centre with @jancarsonwrites.bsky.social @lucycaldwell.bsky.social Glenn Patterson Emily Byers-Ferrian Maria McManus Trú Scott Flanigan Sinéad McKenna @rteradio1.bsky.social

Brilliant to be back in Belfast for the launch of the Belfast Book Festival run by the Crescent Arts Centre. Here I am with fellow Patrons Glenn Patterson and Paul Muldoon; and with Wendy Erskine, co-judge of the Mairtín Crawford Award, and this year’s winner Sarah Davy.

Great chatting with @wednesdayerskin.bsky.social about this year's Belfast Book Festival at Crescent Arts Centre, where she'll be discussing her debut novel The Benefactors with @lucycaldwell.bsky.social and taking part in several other events... www.irishnews.com/entertainmen...

These Days reviewed in the New York Times today!

Yesterday was a great day for books! This @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social is brilliant, brutally sad; I’ll be thinking about it for a long time. A collection of stories won the International @thebookerprizes.bsky.social !! And a first outing of @elainefeeney.bsky.social’s new book, out imminently.

Relearning to Read: Adventures in Not-Knowing by @annmorgan.bsky.social is the Swim in a Pond in the Rain for 2025! Details here, pre-orders open with @renardpress.com

The paperback of Openings is officially published and out in the world today!

A lovely commission - I drew on my childhood learning Suzuki violin and teen years playing in youth orchestras to write the short story for this year’s Proms Guide. Out now!

A beautiful edition of an excellent collection of stories! I’m a big fan of Lucy’s work. Here’s my review of OPENINGS, should you need further convincing. #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/02/04/o...

Hot off the press, the new paperback edition of Openings!

A few days in NYC for the US launch of These Days, book signings across the city and an event at Glucksman Ireland House!

These Days is published in the US today! I love this cover, a detail from a painting by Scottish artist Alberto Morocco.

Great chatting to @lucycaldwell.bsky.social about this Belfast Books Festival & Crescent Arts Centre competition platforming new writing talents - only one week left to enter! www.irishnews.com/entertainmen...

A flying visit to Belfast for a very special event - in conversation with Gary Lightbody for the home launch of his memoir, in association with the Belfast Book Festival. This year’s festival will run 5-12th June with the programme launched late April - all events pay what you can or free!

“One writer, one story, one in-depth masterclass”: on Weds 9 April at 7pm online I’ll be taking a Word Factory masterclass talking you through the writing of my short story “Hamlet, a love story” (which you’ll get to read in advance). More info & tix here! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/small-like...

I'm not sure how niche this is (am guessing, very) but I've just finished a 5,000 word story about the minute and a quarter that Julie Andrews' Maria and Christopher Plummer's Captain spend dancing the Ländler. Sixty years of the Sound of Music this month!

I wrote a small piece for the @irishtimes.com tribute to Jennifer Johnston. Forever grateful!

Just arrived - my first two collections of stories in Chinese! Multitudes has become Reasons to Stay in this World, and Intimacies is All the People Were Mean and Bad. Both are out now with Archipel Press, in translations by Wei Liu & with a foreword, for which I'm so grateful, by my friend Yan Ge.

The annual Mairtín Crawford Awards for emerging writers held by the Belfast Book Festival are open for entry! Details here, and details also of the *free* online workshop @wednesdayerskin.bsky.social & I will be running on Sat 15 Feb! belfastbookfestival.com/workshops

It’s official! THESE DAYS will be out in the US on 8 April with Sarah Jessica Parker’s imprint at Zando, SJPLit. I love the ethos of the imprint and I LOVE the US cover - a detail from a painting by Scottish artist Alberto Morocco.

This is one of those poems that taught me everything. We are all the lesser for the loss of Michael Longley yesterday. I’m grateful to have known his kindness and benevolence and to have been able to learn from him.

A Winter Christmas

Big house in the little woods! The work of several evenings, destined to be smashed in milliseconds on Christmas Day 🎄

A powerful new story about damage, abjection and the erotic in n+1 by @crawjill.bsky.social who’s slowly building an impressive archive of meticulous and disturbing short fiction with the magazine. Link to the story here: www.nplusonemag.com/authors/craw...

If I said this was a book-length poem written in the form of an email to a letting agent, it would be true, and yet not capture anything of Ella Frears’ incredible book’s propulsive force. I just couldn’t stop reading it. Loved its fierce, wild, scathing energy. Out now with Rough Trade Books.

Very grateful for this from James Patterson for RTÉ. No Alibis published a ltd ed signed hardback of Openings (with an extra story!) if you want to order one just in time for Christmas 🎄

I was lucky enough to take part in one of @annmorgan.bsky.social’s “Incomprehension” workshops as she developed her new book - it was mind-expanding and so much fun. RELEARNING TO READ will be out next year, available to pre-order now - I thoroughly recommend it! renardpress.com/books/relear...

@backlisted.bsky.social Loved your Nicholas Fisk episode, thank you! Please will you do one on Robert Cormier? Would love to find fellow Cormier readers 🙏

Fantastic conversation with Jessica Au. Cold Enough For Snow is a glittering meditation of family, memory, art. One of my absolute favourite books! Thanks so much @lucycaldwell.bsky.social and @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social! soundcloud.com/user-1233012...

Trying to think of a collective noun for Irish Writers, as 30 of us - me, @louisekennedy.bsky.social @daraobriain.bsky.social @lucycaldwell.bsky.social - will be at @britishlibrary.bsky.social this weekend. If you can’t attend, many events will be live-streamed. www.seetickets.com/tour/irish-w...

An electrifying night at Folkestone Book Festival last night - Sam McAlister & Lucia Osborne-Crowley were incredible, and Rebecca Watson & Jo Hamya both such sure-footed intelligent stylists. And a perfectly celestial end to the evening in… Folkestone’s Wetherspoons!

A brilliant event discussing motherhood & writing at Folkestone Book Festival last night - one of those conversations that spilled out so urgently into the audience, the bar afterwards, on into the night… (Also pictured: a proof of curator @sophiehaydock.bsky.social’s forthcoming book!)

If you’re in or near Folkestone, come and hear me talk at this year’s Book Festival with Naomi Wood and Yan Ge this coming Monday 18th at 6pm! Details here: www.creativefolkestone.org.uk/whats-on/luc...