Claire Hennessy's Blog

New look!

Some tweaking of this here website.Delighted to be the guest judge for this Teen Short Story Competition (deadline 1st August). Next Submitting Your Work seminar (Zoom) takes place Wednesday 7th September.Latest YA reviews for the Irish Times can be found here. More yammerings & bookish thoughts can be found here. Vanishing now…

Welcome to 2022…

First YA column of 2022 is available over at the Irish Times now. Regular updates, including other book reviews & musings, now live over at the newsletter, if you’re so inclined.

Work queries to chennessybooks [at] gmail [dot] com – back at the desk properly next week!

Latest book reviews (June-September 2021)

Some mini-book-reviews from the past while. (I’ll be collating these, and other bits, over here in the future.)

Fiction (contemporary):

Standard Deviation – Katherine HeinyHolding Her Breath – Eimear RyanSorrow and Bliss – Meg MasonThe Night Always Comes – Willy VlautinEight Perfect Hours – Lia LouisThe Switch – Beth O’LearyOh William! – Elizabeth StroutThat Summer – Jennifer WeinerAdmission – Jean Hanff KorelitzThe Echo Chamber – John BoyneSaint Maybe – Anne Tyler As You Were – Elaine FeeneyBeautiful World, Where Are You – Sally Rooney

Fiction (historical):

The Pull of the Stars – Emma DonoghueA Land Without Wolves – Daniel Wade

Fiction (crime/thriller/suspense):

The Lies You Told – Harriet TyceWho Is Maud Dixon? – Alexandra AndrewsThe Plot – Jean Hanff KorelitzOne by One – Ruth WareDeliver Me – Karen ColeRock Paper Scissors – Alice FeeneyThe Maidens – Alex MichaelidesThe Turnout – Megan AbbottThe Man Who Died Twice – Richard OsmanMy Best Friend’s Secret – Emily FreudIn My Dreams I Hold A Knife – Ashley Winstead

Non-fiction (self-help, mental health, etc):

No Such Thing As Normal – Bryony Gordon

Non-fiction (general):

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed – Jon RonsonWhy Social Media Is Ruining Your Life – Katherine Ormerod

Non-fiction (memoir):

Heating & Cooling – Beth Ann FennellyRememberings – Sinéad O’ConnorSmall – Claire Lynch

Children’s fiction:

Julia and the Shark – Kiran Millwood Hargrave with Tom de FrestonThe Little Bee Charmer of Henrietta Street – Sarah Webb

Banshee #12

Issue 12 of Banshee is available to order now! (It is also available in a number of independent bookshops – support your local if you have one.) Guest edited by John Patrick McHugh (fiction) & Jessica Traynor (poetry). Cat-related content vetted (ahem) by this editorial assistant.

A celebration of this issue is happening in association with DLR arts office on Culture Night & will be live-streamed.

Other Banshee-related stuff: Deirdre Sullivan will be speaking about I Want To Know That I Will Be Okay as part of the Red Line Book Festival, in an event focusing on the short story. (Tons of events happening, do check out the full list. Am chairing an interview with four debut novelists, which feels like a mad term to use for writers with so much experience between them, & very much looking forward to it.)

Submissions for Issue 13 will be open throughout October.

(That is all my news. Stay safe out there in this strange world, fellow humans.)

Spring/summer book reviews et al

Some things from the last while (what even is time these days):

latest YA review columns (The Irish Times): April / May / June / Julylatest children’s books reviews (Children’s Books Ireland): Voyage of the Sparrowhawk / Here We Are: Book of Numbers writing about censorship vs curation in children’s & YA fiction (The Irish Times) interviewed for this piece about Irish literary journals, creativity & the pandemic of doomthe Banshee team on this year’s Rising Stars list, compiled by The Bookseller

Latest book reviews (Nov 2020-May 2021)

Some mini-book-reviews from the past while:Fiction (contemporary): Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout Olive, Again – Elizabeth Strout Dear Emmie Blue – Lia Louis Ghosts – Dolly Alderton The Book of Two Ways – Jodi Picoult You Exist Too Much – Zaina Arafat Love Your Life – Sophie Kinsella The Weight of Love – Hilary Fannin In Pursuit of Happiness – Freya Kennedy Threshold – Rob Doyle My Name is Lucy Barton – Elizabeth Strout White City – Kevin Power Anything Is Possible – Elizabeth Strout Listening Still – Anne Griffin Bright Burning Things – Lisa Harding Fake Accounts – Lauren Oyler Other Women – Cathy KellyFiction (speculative, magic realism, etc): The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night – Jen Campbell Modern Times – Cathy SweeneyFiction (historical/historical-ish): The Butchers – Ruth Gilligan Cilka’s Journey – Heather Morris The World That We Knew – Alice HoffmanFiction (crime/thriller/suspense): Home Before Dark – Riley Sager A Good Father – Catherine Talbot The Guest List – Lucy Foley Girl A – Abigail Dean The Push – Ashley Audrain 56 Days – Catherine Ryan Howard The Killing Kind – Jane Casey Watch Her Fall – Erin Kelly The Woman In Cabin 10 – Ruth Ware Dream Girl – Laura LippmanNon-fiction (self-help, mental health, etc): The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker I Am Definitely, Probably Enough (I Think) – Tori PressNon-fiction (feminism): Feminism Backwards – Rosita Sweetman Women Don’t Owe You Pretty – Florence Given Don’t Touch My Hair – Emma DabiriNon-fiction (memoir): Unfollow – Megan Phelps-Roper Educated – Tara Westover Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed – Meghan Daum (ed.) The Story of Mary MacLane – Mary MacLane People Like Me – Lynn Ruane Corpsing – Sophie White Can You Tolerate This? – Ashleigh Young

I want to know that you know about I Want To Know That I Will Be Okay

“As macabre as Roald Dahl at his finest, Deirdre Sullivan’s collection of short stories is an eerie, uncanny thing. Beautiful and haunting in equal measures.” – Louise O’Neill

The latest title from Banshee Press is a short story collection from Deirdre Sullivan. It’s her first book aimed at a specifically adult/general audience, even though her award-winning YA fiction (including her fairytale collection Tangleweed and Brine, her Children of Lir retelling Savage Her Reply, and her witchy Perfectly Preventable Deaths) has often found its way onto the grown-up bookshelves.

It’s gorgeous. You can find out more about it – and order – from Banshee directly, and it is also available to order from (and from Monday 17th, buy from! In person!) all good bookshops.

Deirdre has written a bit about writing the collection here, and will be taking part in the International Literature Festival Dublin later this month.

The launch is this Thursday, in association with the West Cork Literary Festival.

New short story

April 2021, Doire Press

“We’re not *mean* to her or anything. But it’s hard for us not to roll our eyes at each other or make faces when she gets all dorkishly excited during our agri-tech class, like learning about techniques for soil regeneration is super-cool and not basically about dirt and chemicals. This one time she actually says, ‘I want to be a farmer when I grow up’, like we don’t all know that it’s a dead industry and all this stuff in school about ways of ‘reversing climate change’ is pretty much like Santa.”

‘Girls Will Be…’

Very very pleased to have a new short story in Empty House, a climate-change/crisis/catastrophe anthology of poetry & prose edited by Alice Kinsella & Nessa O’Mahony, published by Doire Press, officially launching on April 22nd (Earth Day) & linked in with Friends of the Earth, Ireland.

New from Banshee Press!

APRIL: Issue 11 of Banshee – spring/summer 2021 – pre-order now MAY: Debut book for adults from acclaimed YA author Deirdre Sullivan – pre-order now

Spring 2021 book reviews

Over at the Children’s Books Ireland website: reviews of Perfect on Paper (YA) and Love (picturebook)The latest YA review columns for The Irish Times: January, February, March (see also: interview with Angie Thomas)For the Irish Examiner: a look at 15 debuts from Irish women writers out this yearInformally: Instagram reviews from 2021