Claire Hennessy's Blog, page 2

Latest bits & pieces

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YA fiction reviews from autumn/winter, with commentary in the third person for some reason:

YA fiction: the best of 2020, in which YA-specific genres are cited and/or invented & Claire is both snarky & earnest (December)YA Fiction: satisfying reads for December, in which Claire recognizes that implausible rom-coms about girls falling in love against the backdrop of musical theatre may be a niche interest and yet (December)YA fiction: Growing up black in the US, in which it’s very clear Claire wrote her column the week of the American elections (November)YA fiction: Witches, goddesses and cheerleaders for Halloween, in which there is a (relevant) quote from the Netflix adaptation of The Baby-Sitters Club (October)YA fiction: Children of Lir’s Aífe tells her side of the story, in which Dublin architecture plays a bigger part than you might expect (September)The return of Edward Cullen, vampire and emotional abuser, in which Claire tries to be ‘I was into her before she was cool’ about Jacqueline Wilson (September)

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Contributions to ‘best of’ pieces:

The Lonely Crowd ‘books of the year’ Banshee ‘best of’ (short pieces)

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Other things:

Poems! (Notions!) ‘Dragon’ can be found in ROPES  issue 28; ‘Kintsugi’ in The Lonely Crowd , issue 12/5-year anniversary edition.Interview from a while back about Banshee journal & press, with a particular focus on poetry. I was on a panel about YA fiction as part of the International Literature Festival Dublin that is watch-back-able. (This was, despite the weirdness of virtual events, a really nice one to do.)Virtual things I was not ‘in’ but involved with via Banshee Press: the launch of our first poetry book, Gold Light Shining by Bebe Ashley (she is in conversation with poet Stephen Sexton) & a reading/Q&A event marking 5 years of the journal for the Dublin Book Festival.

Latest book reviews (July-Oct 2020)

Just gathering up some of the books I’ve been yammering about over the past few months…



Fiction (contemporary):

Gravity Is The Thing by Jaclyn Moriarty
Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan
This Happy by Niamh Campbell
Nothing But Blue Sky by Kathleen MacMahon
Here Is The Beehive by Sarah Crossan
Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner
Olive by Emma Gannon
Beach Read by Emily Henry
Scenes of a Graphic Nature by Caroline O’Donoghue









Fiction (speculative, magic realism, etc):

The Dead Wife’s Handbook by Hannah Beckerman
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
XX by Angela Chadwick
The Harpy by Megan Hunter
The Grace Year by Kim Ligget
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter
The Time of My Life by Cecelia Ahern







Fiction (historical, inc. alternate history):

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Birdie by Nuala O’Connor
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld





Fiction (crime/thriller/suspense):

Ask No Questions by Claire Allan
Hidden Lies/The Woman Outside My Door by Rachel Ryan
The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Silent Kill by Jane Casey
After The Silence by Louise O’Neill
His & Hers by Alice Feeney
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley





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

Sabotage by Emma Gannon
The Art of Creativity by Susie Pearl
What Have I Done? by Laura Dockrill
Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferriss
In My Room by Jim Lucey
It’s All Absolutely Fine by Ruby Elliot
Elena Vanishing by Elena & Clare B Dunkle
Craftfulness by Rosemary Davidson & Arzu Tahsin
Sane by Emma Young
On Being Human by Jennifer Pastiloff
Untamed by Glennon Doyle





Non-fiction (essays):

OK, Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea by Patrick Freyne
A Ghost In The Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
The Problem With Everything by Meghan Daum

Autumn/winter 2020

Issue #10 of Banshee (autumn/winter 2020) is available now from the website as well as in several bookshops; a bumper edition full of gorgeous writing.



Gold Light Shining , the debut collection of poetry from Bebe Ashley, will be published by Banshee Press in October.

March YA reviews & more

Latest things written, non-fiction edition:

Young adult round-up: Sheena Wilkinson’s historical novel is the final in a trilogy (The Irish Times, March 2020)
Miles O’Brien Redefines What it Means to be an Irishman in Space  (StarTrek.com, March 2020)

Latest things written, fiction edition:

‘Knitting’, a micro-fiction in the latest issue of Boyne Berries
‘Knowing’, a flash fiction in the latest issue of Sonder

Upcoming workshops:

Creative Writing Kickstart 1 (8 weeks, asychronous learning – i.e. log in any time of the week to access material) starting week of Monday 30th March
Lots of other online courses (again, log in any time of the week) at Big Smoke
And our regular evening workshops will run online but as live video-chats at the usual times (6.30-8.30pm)

February YA reviews

(link to the online edition)

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YA reviews in today's Irish Times (The Ticket, books section).

A post shared by Claire Hennessy (@chennessybooks) on Feb 15, 2020 at 1:58am PST

2020 – dude!

Here are the latest few young adult review roundups for the Irish Times:

Young adult fiction: Delightful distractions for January (January 2020)Young adult books: smashing the sound of silence (December 2019)Young adult fiction round-up: Holly Jackson’s gripping crime thriller (November 2019)Young adult books roundup: contender for ‘best of 2019’ lists (October 2019)

And here are some things coming up, creative writing workshop-wise:

Children’s and YA Fiction (Mondays, starting 27th January)Writing Boost (Saturday 29th February)Creative Writing for Self-Expression and Wellbeing (Saturday 21st March)& more

Also:

We revamped the online creative writing workshops at Big Smoke last year & it’s been very pleasing indeed – group classrooms for everyone to share things in. I have become slightly obsessed with IG stories about seventy bajillion years after everyone else, but still.I mean, I am still on the twitters yammering about mostly book-ish things, too. Oh, right, self-promotion stuff. (Ugh. Notions.) So there are three kinds of workshops/talks/classes I deliver to places as a once-off kind of thing – author visits (mostly for schools), creative writing workshops (for ages 8+ up to adult), and publishing seminars (older teens, college students, adults). Find out more here. Seriously, it’s 2020. Is that not properly bonkers? It is The Future!

Things!

CORRESPONDENCES: an anthology to call for an end to direct provision is available in bookshops as well as online via the Stinging Fly for purchase. Edited by Stephen Rea & Jessica Traynor, it’s a collection of stories, poems, images & essays from those in direct provision in Ireland, paired with work from Irish writers & artists. How the project worked is that there was back-and-forth over email between each pair, particularly with a view to offering editorial tweaks and fine-tuning to the pieces by those in DP, so that the work on offer isn’t just about sharing these voices & stories but helping them to arrive in the public eye with their best possible foot forward. To be work that is both political and artistic. And to be part of a community of people telling stories and making things in this country. So there’s all that, and there’s the power stories have to help with cultural and political change (we’ve seen that here in recent years with the referendums), and then there’s of course that other thing that helps with change, which is cold hard cash, and all proceeds from the anthology go towards MASI (Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland). Very much worth purchasing a copy or three as Christmas gifts, in other words.

Things! (again)

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Issue 9 of @banshee.lit making its way into Dublin bookshops today… #banshee #bansheejournal #bansheepress

A post shared by Claire Hennessy (@chennessybooks) on Oct 8, 2019 at 4:15am PDT

Banshee Issue 9 launches this Thursday (October 17th) in The Winding Stair bookshop in Dublin, 6.30pm-8pm. There’ll be readings, chats & wine on the night. All welcome! Banshee Issue 10 is open for submissions until midnight on Halloween (October 31st). Accepting short stories, essays/memoir/creative non-fiction, flash fiction, and poetry. I’ve written articles about submitting to literary journals (why it’s worthwhile, and how to go about doing so) and setting up a small press (and how things take longer than you imagine they will) for writing.ie.Even more new writing workshops open for booking at the Big Smoke Writing Factory, including an Intermediate Children’s/YA Fiction workshop on Saturday 23rd November. Other cool one-day workshops: Creativity Workshop (general) 9th November, Experimental Fiction 16th November, Poetry Workshop 23rd November, World-Building 23rd November, and Creative Writing for the 21st Century 30th November.And there are online courses on offer, too, with both November and January start dates.Books I am loving at the moment: Set Me On Fire, a poetry anthology edited by Ella Risbridger; the children’s non-fiction book Dare To Dream by Sarah Webb & illustrated by Graham Corcoran; D.O.G.S. by M.A. Bennett, a sequel to her first YA novel, S.T.A.G.S.Other stuff I am loving at the moment: the soundtrack to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (in Dublin recently); Elizabeth Gilbert’s Instagram; season 3 of Big Mouth.

Things!

Latest YA review column in the Irish Times looks at the difficulty of writing about ‘issues’. Banshee things: Paris Syndrome has been getting some fabulous reviews, Issue 9 launches in Dublin on Thursday 17th October, and Issue 10 is open for submissions all this month.Big Smoke things: several shiny new creative writing workshops coming up this month and next. Gave a workshop for the first-but-surely-not-the-last Donaghmede Literary Festival. Look, I’m on a sign!Books I’ve loved recently: Mona Awad’s 13 Ways of Looking At A Fat Girl , the latest Aisling book by Emer McLysaght & Sarah Breen, and My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell (out January 2020).

Banshee Issue #9

Available to pre-order now!