A new short story collection from Galway author Órfhlaith Foyle will be launched at the Town Hall Theatre on Saturday, September 12, at 12.30pm.
The Other Poet Drives a Black Mercedes from Foyle is a paean to a writer’s imagination and experience, where the liminal border between the conscious world and the other world exists.
Critics describe her work as immersive, elemental stories, full of “unstable gladness” but also unsettling as they charge from the west coast of Ireland to the “outer reaches of unfettered imagination”, never flinching from "the hard, the strange, or the cruel, they are always guided by the kindness of attention and the discipline of empathy".
A young teacher of English witnesses the results of a gangland murder in London’s East End, then later is visited by a fisherwoman, a medieval monk and a Norman knight.
An artist murdered in Auschwitz now lives a refugee life in Athlone. A family wake descends into a matter-of-fact burning of the dead.
A poet journeys into the other world of her imagination. A medieval scribe writes an account of her pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory to her murdered father, Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Emily Brontë struggles to write her second novel, battling with disapproval from her two sisters and brother about her first novel, Wuthering Heights.
Órfhlaith Foyle is a short story writer, poet and dramatist. She has published a novel, a poetry collection and three volumes of short stories, including her last collection, Three Houses in Rome (Doire Press ).
She also wrote and directed the radio dramas May’s End and How I Murdered Lucrezia - both adapted from her short stories.
