Donegal Launch of LeafLight Moon

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Olive Travers of Sunday Miscellany fame will interview Monica Corish about her prize-winning novel ‘LeafLight Moon – a novel of prehistoric Ireland’ on Sunday 9th November at 1.30 pm in the Abbey Arts Centre, on the final day of the Ballyshannon Allingham Arts Festival. The event is free, and all are welcome.

Photo credits: Brendan Murray and Emer O’Shea

“When I closed the covers of LeafLight Moon, I immediately missed its cast of characters! This novel’s emotional charge arises for me from the empathy with which Monica gives voice to the characters’ inner lives. They felt both startingly contemporary in their complexity, yet utterly true to their own time. They feel vividly real. Through them we experience prehistory not as a distant curiosity but as a well-spring of our modern dilemmas with its themes of belonging, loss, adaptation and the costs of progress. The natural world they inhabit is a living presence evoked with such poetic precision throughout, that it is not just a backdrop but another character in its own right. The novel is a nuanced portrayal of the perpetual tension between preservation and progress. This is historical fiction at its best, lyrical, intelligent and humane.” Olive Travers

Leitrim Launch of LeafLight Moon

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Glens Centre, Manorhamilton, Saturday, November 1 at 8 PM. Click here for tickets €15/€13

Wordsmiths, Songwriters, Troubadours – I am delighted to be sharing the stage at the Glens as the guest of the multi-talented musician, singer and songwriter John Hoban, and the award-winning Irish-Peruvian poet Isabela Basombrío Hoban.

I will be reading from my award-winning novel “LeafLight Moon – a novel of prehistoric Ireland”, set in Sligo, North Leitrim, and a little bit of Tyrone, Fernamagh and Donegal…

LeafLight Moon wins at the CAP Awards!

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LeafLight Moon has won the 2025 CAP Award for Fiction, and the Golden CAP for best independently published book. CAP Awards patron Paul Lynch announced Monica Corish as the overall winner at the award ceremony in Chapters Bookstore on October 10.

Judge Alan Ryan said of LeafLight Moon – a novel of prehistoric Ireland: “One story in particular stayed with me long after I put it down. It was multi-layered yet simple, occasionally quirky yet completely believable. I could easily imagine the events and time it told of happening exactly as written. I’d love to see it as a film. I reckon it would make a stunning Irish version of The Mission.”

LeafLight Moon is available in-store from Chapters Bookstore and Books Upstairs in Dublin, Liber Books in Sligo, A Novel Idea in Ballyshannon, and The Four Masters in Donegal town; online from Lulu Bookstore, Bookshop.org in the US, Waterstones in the UK, and other online outlets; and as an e-book from Amazon UK.

The Carousel Aware Prize for Independently Published Authors (The CAP for Indies) aims to provide a platform to showcase the cream of Irish Self-Published authors, bringing them to the attention of book shops, distributors, and the media in Ireland and abroad, with all money raised going to the charity Aware.

Watch the awards ceremony here (fiction prize at 1:14:44)

Monica Corish with Carolann Copland – photo credit Christine Higgins

Join us at the CAP Awards!

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Both Monica Corish’s “LeafLight Moon – a novel of prehistoric Ireland” and Tom Sigafoos’s “Pool of Darkness – Raymond Chandler in Ireland” have been shortlisted for the 2025 CAP Award for Fiction. Please join us at the awards ceremony on Friday, October 10, 6 PM in Chapters Bookstore, Parnell Square, Dublin, where the books will be available for purchase.

Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch is patron of the Awards, which aim to provide a platform to showcase the cream of Irish Self-Published authors, bringing them to the attention of book shops, distributors, and the media in Ireland and abroad, with all money raised going to the charity Aware. Please share this invite with your friends and other book-lovers.

For news of November events in Leitrim, Sligo and Donegal, go to pucabooks.ie/events

LeafLight Moon shortlisted for CAP Awards…

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… and Tom Sigafoos’s novel ‘Pool of Darkness – Raymond Chandler in Ireland’, also published by Púca Books. Paul Lynch, patron of the CAP Awards for Indies, will announce the winners at an event in Dublin in October.

LeafLight Moon can be purchased at the launch on Friday, August 22 at 5 pm in the Yeats Building, Hyde Bridge, Sligo, F91 DVY4. The event is free, and no booking is required.

LeafLight Moon is available for pre-order and postal delivery from Liber Books in Sligo and A Novel Idea in Ballyshannon; as an e-book from Amazon UK; and from multiple online retailers over the coming days.

Please spread the word and sign up to receive our newsletter Púca News & Story Extras, for updates on future events and to explore the intriguing background to our stories.

‘Pool of Darkness’ and ‘LeafLight Moon’ on CAP Awards Longlist

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Tom Sigafoos and I are both on the 2025 Fiction Longlist for the Carousel Awards for Irish Independent Authors, under the patronage of Booker prizewinner Paul Lynch. The shortlist will be announced in mid-August, and the winners on October 10 at Chapters Book Shop in Dublin.

Tom’s Pool of Darkness: Raymond Chandler in Ireland imagines a 1948 encounter between crime novelist Chandler and philosopher Wittgenstein in a remote corner of County Galway. As the two notoriously-reclusive men develop an unlikely friendship, they stumble into a conspiracy that involves former Nazis, the US House Un-American Activities Committee, and a cat belonging to the widow of William Butler Yeats. Theo Dorgan describes the book as “… a gem and a joy”…

LeafLight Moon – a novel of prehistoric Ireland will be launched by Susan O’Keeffe during Sligo’s Heritage Week. Closely researched and set 6000 years ago in the rich prehistoric landscapes of Sligo and the north-west, LeafLight Moon tells the story of the fateful encounter between Ireland’s first farmers and the hunter-gatherers of the Hearth of MotherMountain.

 

Ireland’s First People

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Did you watch From That Small Island on RTE? Were you tantalised by the brief mention of Ireland’s dark skinned, blue eyed hunter-gatherers? Want to know more?

“LeafLight Moon – a novel of prehistoric Ireland” will be released in August.

Closely researched and set in the rich prehistoric landscapes of Sligo and the North West, it tells the story of the fateful encounter between Ireland’s first farmers and the hunter-gatherers of the Hearth of MotherMountain.

Follow my blog for updates…

Alone, Together

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I wrote this poem at an Ecopoetry workshop in the Glens Centre last August. My prompt was a line from Amanda Gorman’s poem Earthrise: “Floating like a silver raft in space… “

Thanks to Loretta Brennan of Africa Magazine for finding the marvellous image.

Alone, Together

It is possible that we are alone
in all the quantum flip and spin,
the quark and charm
of the many-stanzaed universe,
the beginning with no beginning,
the grey entropic end.


It is possible that we are alone,
we wrens and salamanders
we spinning sycamore helicopters,
we beluga and narwhal and fungi,
we humans, entangled
with apples and worms and plastic,
with dark matter and black holes,
with fracked shale and feral fires.


It is possible that we are alone, together,
in all the sparkling riptide of stars.

Allingham Festival Francis Harvey Award for Poetry, James Keane Award for Flash Ficiton

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The 2023 Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction Competitions are open for entries until 22 September. Competition rules and entry forms are detailed on the Festival website www.allinghamfestival.com. The Festival will take place on 8-12 November in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal.

This year’s Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction Awards Ceremony will feature a new award – the Francis Harvey Award for Poetry. This annual award has been created to highlight the life and legacy of Donegal poet Francis Harvey, 1925-2014. The winner of the 2023 Allingham Poetry Competition will also be declared the winner of the Francis Harvey Award. The poetry competition will be judged by poet and publisher Kate Newman.

If you’re not familiar with Francis Harvey, look into his Collected Poems. In her introduction, Moya Cannon writes that ‘…Francis Harvey’s work combines the passion for precision of a naturalist and the yearning for grace of a poet, except for the fact that a passion for precision, for naming, is also part of the bedrock of poetry. In [his] poems there is a vivid sense of how we are all moving, “free but tethered, through time’s inexorable weathers.”’

As in past years, the winner of the Allingham Flash Fiction Competition will also be declared the winner of the Keane Family Award, honouring the memory of Ballyshannon writer and arts patron James Keane. The flash ficiton competiton will be judged by Alan McMonagle

ONE places left in Ecopoetry Workshop, Manorhamilton, July 22/23

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Image Credit © Rudolphe Trider

Be inspired to write poems that celebrate, challenge and lament humanity’s relationship with the natural world; and, over the course of the weekend, develop your poems from inspiration to revision toward completion.

  • When? Sat July 22, 10:30 – 5; Sun July 23, 10 – 4
  • Where? The Glens Centre, Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim
  • How much? €75 (with thanks to the Glens Centre for their generous support)
  • Early-bird? €60, if booked and paid for before July 15.
  • €60 PayPal – use this link to pay with a debit or credit card – no need for a PayPal account. If you’re having trouble with PayPal, email me at monicacorishwriting@gmail.com.
  • Travelling a distance? The Organic Centre has a list of places to stay in North Leitim

What is Ecopoetry? Why write it?

Creativity is a powerful antidote to burnout – Angela Davis

Ecopoetry is nature poetry that has designs on us, that imagines changing the ways we think, feel about, and live and act in the world. Why Ecopoetry? John Shoptaw

Even when [the nature poem] got the birds and the plants and the animals right it tended to show the beautiful bird but not so often the bulldozer off to the side that was destroying the bird’s habitat. ‘Well Then There Now’, Juliana Spahr

Write about your everyday experience of what is changing in the world around you and the environmental issues you feel passionate about. Because while facts feel slippery and inaccessible and make us feel helpless, experiences can help us understand the world from our own perspective, and artists of all kinds can create experiences better than anyone else. What is Ecopoetry and why write it? Open University, Suzannah Evans

[Readers] feel they ‘know this information already, so why do they need it in a poem’. That is precisely the point. They ‘know’ it. They are not ‘feeling it’. That is what activists in the environmental movement are asking of us: help it be felt, help it be imagined. Jorie Graham, in conversation with Sharon Blackie

[Writing] is a model for how indirect effect can be, how delayed, how invisible; no one is more hopeful than a writer, no one is a bigger gambler. Rebecca Solnit

The future belongs to those who tell the best stories. Jorge Luis Borges

Afric McGlinchey Writing Workshop at the Allingham Festival

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A few places still available: Saturday, 8th November, 9:30 am – 11:15 am in Colaiste Cholmcille, Ballyshannon

Join award-winning poet and mentor Afric McGlinchey for an immersive and inspiring creative writing workshop. You can expect an engaging, gently challenging session that will deepen your awareness of the craft and leave you with new tools and fresh material for your writing. All levels and genres welcome. Just bring a notebook, pen, and your imagination.

NB: The seats for this event are being managed outside the traditional Allingham ticketing system. If you are interested in participating, please send a request to allinghamfest@gmail.com, with a copy to tomsigafoos@gmail.com. If seats are available, we will reply by email to ask you to purchase a ticket for €10 via PayPal or bank transfer to confirm your place. Unconfirmed and overflow requests will be held on a waiting list. Please contact tomsigafoos@gmail.com if you have questions.

Allingham Poetry & Flash Fiction Deadline Sept 28!

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The 2025 Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction Competitions are open! First-place winners will each receive a prize of €300. Deadline for entries is Sunday, September 28. Competition rules, entry forms and Festival details are posted on the Allingham Festival website.

The Festival will run from 5-9 November in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal. Winning entries will be read and the Poetry and Flash Fiction Awards presented at the Literary Lunch on Saturday, 8 November.

Poet and publisher Kate Newmann will judge this year’s Poetry Competition entries. The winning poet will also receive the Francis Harvey Poetry Award. Acclaimed author Nuala O’Connor will judge the Flash Fiction entries. The winner of the Flash Fiction Competition will also be awarded the Keane Family Fiction Prize.