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Lilliput has snapped up an “innovative” debut novel set during the Celtic Tiger years between New Jersey and County Leitrim.
Publisher Antony Farrell acquired world rights for Oona by Alice Lyons from the author at the Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair earlier this year. The Dublin-based press will publish the book in late March 2020 in both paperback and eBook.
According to the publisher: “Lyons’ first novel gives voice to Oona on her fraught journey into adulthood and charts her evolution as an artist in an affluent suburban culture of first-generation immigrants in New Jersey. Through the novel, Oona’s adolescent dissociation is thawed by contact with the physical world, the materials of painting and her engagement with Irish community, culture and landscape.”
Farrell said: “Set during the era of the Celtic Tiger and its aftermath, this is a resonant story conveyed in an innovative form. The tone of the book reflects Oona’s inner damage and the destruction caused by hiding, omitting and obliterating parts of ourselves.”
Lyons said: “Oona is a study in a character’s search for realness after growing up in the unreality of post-war, white suburban America where money is all and both history and death are denied. It’s an honour to have my first novel Oona published by the Lilliput Press, champions of so many deeply original authors who have made lasting contributions to literature and culture in Ireland and the world, among them Desmond Hogan, John Moriarty and Tim Robinson. In the end, it was Lilliput’s passion for my book and the care I knew that they take in the editorial and book-making process that convinced me to sign with them."
Lyons was awarded the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry in 2002 and the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary in 2004. Originally from the US, she has lived in the west of Ireland for 20 years. She currently lectures in creative writing at IT Sligo and is poet-in-residence with the Yeats Society, Sligo.
The acquisition comes as the Lilliput Press celebrates 35 years in business and was shortlisted in its region for The Bookseller Small Press of the Year.
Lyons was awarded the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry in 2002 and the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary in 2004. Originally from the US, she has lived in the west of Ireland for 20 years. She currently lectures in creative writing at IT Sligo and is poet-in-residence with the Yeats Society, Sligo.