‘Non-fiction has the power to change the world and I can't think of a time—in recent memory—when the necessity of doing things differently has felt more immediate.’
“We have just come out of a ‘decade of centenaries’ commemorating and comprehensively analysing Ireland’s ‘revolutionary generation’. We stand to learn much about ourselves by giving the same attention to tracing the subsequent story of Irish radicalism, particularly that led by women, and its influence and enemies, through the 20th century and beyond.”
The anthology is like a cauldron bubbling with Lakshmi and lotus blossoms, whirling dervishes and speechless prayer, solstice spears and sepulchral floors. As Martin Shaw puts it, Moriarty is an ‘associative mythographer’ who writes as if speaking in a heightened delirium from the chaise longue.
‘If you’re going to be a novelist, you write something that is recognisably a novel and that means accepting at least some and probably most of the rules of novels, which include some form of plot and setting because there is nothing without time and space, and some form of narrative because that’s how it is, that’s why readers and writers turn up.’
'Swallows are everywhere. Golondrinas, I say to myself and remember the day on the balcony when Pilar taught me that word. She used to praise them for eating the mosquitos in summer. The balcony, with its view over the town and valley, the factories and slaughterhouses, el río Cinca, and its dry tributary el río Sosa. High on the hill above us, the castle.'
‘Vaginov depicts a world where nothing means what it used to mean; not virginity, not Easter, not uniforms, not fathers, not marriage proposals nor playing the piano. Anybody who hasn’t realised this must be a bit mad.’
‘If you’re going to be a novelist, you write something that is recognisably a novel and that means accepting at least some and probably most of the rules of novels, which include some form of plot and setting because there is nothing without time and space, and some form of narrative because that’s how it is, that’s why readers and writers turn up.’
'Swallows are everywhere. Golondrinas, I say to myself and remember the day on the balcony when Pilar taught me that word. She used to praise them for eating the mosquitos in summer. The balcony, with its view over the town and valley, the factories and slaughterhouses, el río Cinca, and its dry tributary el río Sosa. High on the hill above us, the castle.'
'And so she took off, curving round the cliffs of Sully Bay. She kept going, tumbling over the boundless, silver sea, flying farther than she’d been in years. Finally, summoning the courage to fish again, she swooped, and she dove—but she failed.'
Gregor Montgomery, she said, sweeping her palm to behold the clouds. He was the one who set that night sky alight.
I remember hearing the screams of the jumpers as I gathered greasy paper plates and empty crisp packets. The lake stays cold all year round, colder than the sea, so even in the middle of a heatwave the water is a shock. People shriek as they plunge and they shout when they surface.
‘They wait at the lights. The way he presses the button on the pedestrian crossing is slow and deliberate. She shivers. If he was her husband, he would put an arm around her, rub briskly up and down her back to warm her up. But he is not her husband.’
5th November 2025
18th September 2025
‘If you’re going to be a novelist, you write something that is recognisably a novel and that means accepting at least some and probably most of the rules of novels, which include some form of plot and setting because there is nothing without time and space, and some form of narrative because that’s how it is, that’s why readers and writers turn up.’
'Swallows are everywhere. Golondrinas, I say to myself and remember the day on the balcony when Pilar taught me that word. She used to praise them for eating the mosquitos in summer. The balcony, with its view over the town and valley, the factories and slaughterhouses, el río Cinca, and its dry tributary el río Sosa. High on the hill above us, the castle.'
‘She did not like to think of Barbie all alone. How sad that would make her. Mother had cried and cried when Father did not come home. But he would. And when he came home, he would ask about his watch.’