Literature

One hundred years ago, on a stormy starless night in the African rainforest, a gorilla is born. The elders prophesise that the ape’s life will be filled with many misfortunes. Normally, I’d be sceptical about prophecies, but these gorilla…

Kemi mentioned it on Friday night, simply to tell him something amusing, to entertain him whilst he made them a Thai red curry for dinner. She hadn’t particularly planned on saying anything.  “The bank accidentally put three million pounds…

They were both tired and hungry. She wore a pink skirt and a black blouse. He wore cream chinos, a navy polo and a grey flat-cap hat. After a day of visiting the numerous gardens and pagodas they decided to eat at a restaurant beside one of…

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a bilingual Irish writer, born in Galway in 1981. She writes both prose and poetry, in both Irish and English. Her books explore birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Her awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish…

Reading Under the Hawthorn Tree as a child, the first title in Marita Conlon McKenna’s Children of the Famine trilogy, I found myself initially drawn to the character of Eily. Her selflessness in caring for her younger siblings impressed…

Sean Colletti is a native of Southern California but has lived in the UK since 2009. He graduated from the University of Birmingham (BA) and the University of East Anglia (MA) and is currently back at Birmingham, finishing his PhD…

With the new academic year now in full swing and university students both fresh and jaded settling (back) into seminars and tutorials, lectures and labs, it’s an ideal time to talk about the Irish campus novel – this year more so than…

Nowadays Dante Alighieri is primarily remembered as the author of the Divine Comedy, but there was a lot more to him than that. Politician and poet, he ended his life in exile from a city which he had once ruled. He elevated the language of…

In A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver states that entering a poem is like, “stepping into a rowboat, with a stranger at the oars.” Liz Quirke’s debut collection, The Road, Slowly, brought me into a new and fruitful land. One where the female…

After Hours By Erin Wilson It's two a.m. I'm standing on an otherwise deserted street, socks well used and falling loose at my ankles. What might it look like, a middle-aged woman with her hands pressed to the glass of a dirty window? I'm…