MYSTERY surrounds the identity of a West Belfast writer whose collection of short stories has been praised as “exceptional”.
‘Every One Still Here’ has been written under the pseudonym of Liadan Ní Chuinn and is published by Stinging Fly Press. Early versions of some of the stories were first published in The Stinging Fly magazine and in Granta online. This is Liadan’s first book.
Liadan Ní Chuinn was born in 1998 and has requested no interviews to publicise the book's launch.
In the stories a young girl spends her days on a double-decker bus. A bride-to-be prays to St Valentine’s bones. Flowers are found, left in bouquets, all over a museum. Teenagers gather to dissect the human body.
Belfast writer Wendy Erskine said of the collection: “It’s a long time since I've read a short story collection where I’ve felt such an aching tenderness for the people within its pages, and at times an anger on their behalf. How brilliant it is that Liadan Ní Chuinn can render their lives in such complex, compelling ways.”
Belfast novellist Louise Kennedy said: “These are exceptional stories, stark yet richly textured and told in a voice that is at once plain-spoken and lyrical. Liadan Ní Chuinn is the real deal.”
Welsh author Thomas Morris called the collection “an extraordinary book by an extraordinary author who refuses to look the other way”.
“Ní Chuinn’s incantatory sentences quiver like seismographs, registering the quakes and ruptures that can crack a life in two."
Cork writer Danny Denton said: "Liadan Ní Chuinn is a phenomenal writer, with such a striking, distinctive style. Something new and startling is happening here: fiction is being rejuvenated."
Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuinn is published by Stinging Fly Press and priced £9.99.
