Spotlight on: Tramp Press
By Zoe Maple and Amy Tighe
Founded in Dublin by Lisa Coen and Sarah Davis-Goff, Tramp Press launched in 2014 with the mission to find, nurture and publish exceptional literary talent. The independent publisher, which specialises in Irish fiction, received immediate recognition, winning the David Manley Emerging Entrepreneur Award the following year. Since then, Tramp Press has seen success in their mission, with their publications being awarded an array of accolades: Irish Book Awards, the International Dublin Literary Award, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Rooney Prize to name a few. They have also been nominated and shortlisted for the likes of the Booker Prize, the Costa and the Desmond Elliot Prize.
Aside from their passion for excellent writing, the founders of Tramp Press are committed to challenging sexism in the publishing industry, notably making it a policy of theirs not to read submissions addressed “Dear Sir” or citing only male authors as influences.
Upcoming Books
Where I End by Sophie White
The latest novel and horror debut from bestselling author Sophie White, Where I End is a creepily compelling novel about being bound by the blood knot of family. Teenage Aoileann desperately wants a family but has never left the island where her mother lies silent and bed-bound, a survivor of a private disaster no one will speak about. When Rachel and her newborn son move to the island, Aoileann finds a focus for her relentless love.
A Line Made by Walking by Sarah Baume
Winner of the Rooney Prize and the Davy Byrnes Award, this tour-de-force of fiction is a celebration of the extraordinary in the everyday. Struggling to cope with urban life, twenty-five-year-old artist Frankie retreats to her dead grandmother’s house in rural Ireland in her search for meaning and healing.
A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Winner of the Irish Book of the Year Award and Foyles Non-fiction Book of the Year, Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s stunning prose debut weaves two stories together in a fluid hybrid of essay and autofiction. An Irish noblewoman in the 1700s, on discovering her husband’s murder, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes a poem which will reach across time to affect a present-day young mother in a truly profound way.
The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy
Hailed by Gloria Steinem as “shocking, brave, gloriously unfeminine and right on time,” Mona Eltahawy’s feminist manifesto identifies the seven “sins” women and girls are socialised to avoid: anger, attention, profanity, ambition, power, violence and lust. Drawing on her own life and the work of intersectional activists around the world, she encourages women worldwide to defy, disobey and disrupt the patriarchy.
Rediscovered Stories
It Rose Up: A Selection of Lost Irish Fantasy Stories, edited and introduced by Jack Fennell
This collection of lesser-known classic Irish fantasy stories – ranging across the 20th century and featuring strange and playful combinations of magic, electricity, occultism and biblical archetypes – serves to illuminate a side of often overlooked Irish literary heritage.
Dark Enchantment by Dorothy Macardle
Likened to Jamaica Inn and Hotel du Lac, this republication of Dorothy Macardle’s 1953 novel evokes a magical pre-war France in which twenty-year-old Juliette seeks peace in a village in the French Alps. But as she becomes involved with local life, she hears rumours of witchery, prophecy and murder, and wonders whether she can escape the danger before it’s too late.
Notable Books
The Red Word by Sarah Henstra
Fans of Tom Wolfe’s I am Charlotte Simmons and The Secret History by Donna Tartt will recognise the setting spread out before them, the anything-goes mentality of a university campus where fraternity jocks feel entitled to “party” and to take whatever is, to their eyes, on offer. The clash between their greed, and the desire for sexual safety and respect by young student Karen, unfolds in this winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award. She finds herself caught between two increasingly polarised camps: her feminist housemates who want to seek vengeance, and her new boyfriend who lives amongst the brothers of “Gang Bang Central.”
Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume
In the springtime, in a rundown seaside town, two weather-beaten oddities find each other – a dog with one eye and a person with no friends. Their friendship grows over the four seasons, but the community that already shunned them both can’t allow their innocent kinship to continue, either. Baume’s impressive debut shimmers with the threat of what loneliness can do to the soul.
Orange Horses by Maeve Kelly
Originating from Ennis, Co. Clare and educated in Dundalk, Kelly was a founding member, and has long been an administrator, for what is now called Adapt House, Ireland’s largest refuge for women who have had to leave their homes due to domestic abuse. This lived experience has allowed her to bring out Orange Horses, a collection of short stories that illustrate the plight of marginalised women in contemporary Irish society: that of Travellers, impoverished rural-dwellers, diasporic settlers in London, those living an isolated island existence on the Wild Atlantic Way; these stories offer a panoply of Irish experience.