SUSAN MILLAR DuMars, the Galway based writer, poet, and creative writing teacher, will launch her new short story collection, Lights In The Distance, this weekend.
Lights In The Distance contains 13 short stories set in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Belfast, Galway, and Charlotte Bronte’s England.
Susan was born in Philadelphia in 1966 to a Belfast-born mother and since then she has “called several places home”, including Galway, where she now lives with her husband, the poet and critic Kevin Higgins.
That constant uprooting and settling in new places has inspired many of the stories in this collection. “The title is meant to evoke both travel and an aspiration, a yearning,” says Susan. “The stories’ main characters are people who yearn to fit in somewhere in this world.”
Lights In The Distance is the first book of fiction published by Doire Press, which is better known as a publisher of poetry collections.
The book’s cover image includes a photograph of Philadelphia city centre by Donald DuMars, Susan’s father. “I’ve wanted to do some sort of collaborative project with him for years,” she says, “and I’m really proud that we’ve done so.”
Lights In The Distance will be launched in the Galway City Museum this Saturday at 1pm and all are welcome to attend the event.
