Award-winning Irish author Doireann ní Ghríofa will be at Kennys Bookshop on May 14th, joining Tomás Kenny in conversation about her new book Said the Dead.

Tickets for this event are free but are limited.

Born in Galway, Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a poet and essayist living in Cork. Her debut novel, ​​A Ghost in the Throat, won the James Tait Black Prize and was voted overall Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, while the US edition was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It is to appear in 20 further languages worldwide. Doireann is also the author of seven critically-acclaimed books of poetry, each an exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Awards for her writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA), the Ostana Prize (Italy), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature​, among others.

About Said the Dead:
In the city of Cork, a derelict Victorian mental hospital is being converted into modern apartments. One passerby has always flinched as she passes the place. Had her birth occurred in another decade, she too might have lived within those walls. Now, she notices a sign: FOR SALE. It is the first of many signs. Following them, she finds herself drawn into an irresistible river of forgotten voices, those of the women who knew this place best: insistent, vivid and true. They murmur from archives and old records; they whisper from stairwells and walls. Among them – and in one figure in particular — she may find meaning, solace, rage; her own salvation, perhaps, or her own vanishing? A work of sublime intensity and tenderness, Said the Dead breaks the boundaries between worlds — past and present, imagined and real — to make something lasting and new: an experience full of danger, full of love and full of truth.

Pre-order Said the Dead, Kennys Exclusive Signed Limited Edition:
The Kennys Exclusive Signed Limited Edition of Said the Dead is available for pre-order at kennys.ie. Copies will also be available to buy at the event. This signed and numbered hardback edition is limited to 1,000 copies, with an exclusive cover design and an exclusive poem not in any other edition.

If you have any questions on this event or would like to be notified of other events at Kennys Bookshop, please email martha@kennys.ie.