David Monaghan

Dublin Inquirer •

A Woman Remembers Her Rathgar Bookshop, Closed a Year Now

Liz Meldon had been nervous about coming back, she says. We are leaving the road in Rathgar where her bookshop used to be. She had spent more than a decade of her life working here, but she hadn’t come back for quite a while. “I couldn’t put a finger on exactly why,” she says. “It’s always the people you miss the most, about anything. I mean think about it.” She takes one last look in the window to wave goodbye to old friends, customers, and pulls away. Through the windshield is a wet winter morning.
HeadStuff •

A Dublin Bloom | An Interview with Dermot Bolger

Dermot Bolger is a stalwart of the Irish literary scene, having written numerous novels and plays since the mid-1980s. He is known to indigenous readers as a champion of working-class narratives, but the subject matter of his fiction is far-reaching and touches off many facets of Irish life. It is unsurprising then that he would choose to concern himself with Joyce‘s Ulysses, a sprawling narrative that interrogates the contradictions of life in Dublin in the early 20th century.
HeadStuff •

Small Print? | Changes in Irish Publishing

In the last six years, indigenous publishing has undergone a transformation, with new literary journals appearing across the country. Many Irish writers use small quality presses and journals as a springboard before moving to bigger deals in the US and UK. Claire Hennessy, co-editor of the literary journal Banshee, says: "I think small Irish presses have gained this reputation for being brilliant talent scouts and I think that the bigger publishers are keeping a close eye on what’s coming out of the Irish publishing scene.”