Mac DeMarco – Ulster Hall – Live Review – 31/08/26 by Cathy Brown Mac DeMarco, Ulster Hall, Belfast, 31 August 2026 Mac DeMarco has spent much of his career cultivating a reputati…

Back in 2023, I read and loved Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor, a superb novel in which ‘Soldier’, a married woman in the early months of motherhood, experiences a loss of identity, an erasure of he…

Book reviews, snippets of book news, and alerts about books outside the glare of the publicity spotlight.

However determined I am to make progress with my 20 Books of Summer stack, there’s always room for a few distractions. July proved to be one of those months, with four books finding their way…

The title story in Liliana Colanzi’s newly translated (by Chris Andrews) collection You Glow in the Dark is based on a real event when a radiotherapy source was taken from an abandoned hospital lea…

In ancient Sicily two jobless young potters embark on an audacious scheme to stage a production of Greek tragedies in a quarry. The pair have oodles of passion and enthusiasm but little common sense. They don't have two drachmas to rub together. And they completely lack experience of the theatrical world. What could possibly go wrong? Rather a lot as it turns out because they completely misjudge how the authorities and citizens of Syracuse will react to their scheme.

The broadcaster reveals she has smouldering myeloma, which can develop into a type of blood cancer.

Apple TV has renewed Widow's Bay for Season 2 and signed its creator and showrunner Katie Dippold to a multiyear deal.

Book reviews, snippets of book news, and alerts about books outside the glare of the publicity spotlight.

This was the last book in my six session Galley Beggar Critical Reading class led by chief Galley Beggar Sam Jordison. The others were: The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine Kindred by Oc…

This is a post I’ve been meaning to put together for a while, a celebration of some of my favourite novels in which the dark realities of the adult world begin to impinge on the innocence of childh…

False Teeth, a short fiction by Jan Carson

I made it! I’m genuinely amazed! May has been a really busy, slightly chaotic month and I can’t believe I managed to sustain my daily novella reading and posting. I’ve enjoyed it so much, and a mas…

Book reviews, snippets of book news, and alerts about books outside the glare of the publicity spotlight.

In this, her centenary year, the Scottish writer Agnes Owens is ripe for rediscovery, aided by Polygon’s brand new reissues of four of her books, with another three to follow in September. Having v…

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The novel Gliff by Ali Smith has won the Dublin Literary Award for 2026. Dublin Literary Award honours excellence in world literature since 1996. Presented annually, the Award is one of the most significant literature prizes in the world, worth €100,000 for a single work of fiction in original English or translated into English. If the winning book is an English translation, the author receives €75,000 and the translator, €25,000.

Book reviews, snippets of book news, and alerts about books outside the glare of the publicity spotlight.