Tag Archives: Writing

Leitrim Launch of LeafLight Moon

Literary Events, Miscellaneous, Writing, , ,

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!

Competitions, Literary Events, Miscellaneous, , , , ,

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…

Presents sorted!

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Tom Sigafoos’ new novel Pool of Darkness – Raymond Chandler in Ireland is available in paperback, audiobook and Kindle. It would make the perfect gift for fans of historical fiction and crime fiction, and for fans of conspiracies involving Raymond Chandler, former Nazis, the US House Un-American Activities Committee, and a locked-room mystery involving the cat of the widow of William Butler Yeats…

Nuala O’Connor, author of Nora and Seaborne, launched Pool of Darkness at the 2024 Allingham Festival (video link here).

At the launch, Nuala said: “I hope that this novel gets all the notice it deserves. It’s an informed, witty, elegantly written book, with a lively energy in its pages. It’s a celebration of all that’s good and exciting about bio-fiction, about the act of illuminating real people and lived lives; it’s an honouring of Chandler as person, as husband, and as writer… Congratulations, Tom – may your ink never run dry.”

Declan Burke, novelist, critic and regular contributor to the Irish Times, called Pool of Darkness “A magnificent feat of imagination, and brilliantly sustained.”

And Alan Titley, Emeritus Professor of Modern Irish at UCC, said: “Pool of Darkness rattles along, full of wit and great one- liners, funny along the way, brilliantly researched and imaginatively brought forth.… Chandler comes to life as I think he was, generous, but troubled… very human, very vulnerable, yet confident in the no-nonsense of his craft.”

Allingham Competitions – Deadline Extended to 13/10

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The deadline for 2024 Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction Competitions has been extended. All entries, on-line and postal, must be received by 11:59 pm on Sunday, 13 October 2024. See the Allingham Festival website www.allinghamfestival.com for information and entry forms.

I decided to ask WordPress to generate an AI image. Can it not spell, or did I misspell the prompt?!!

Alone, Together

Eco-Writing Workshops, Miscellaneous, Writing, , ,

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.

Deadline Extended for Allingham Poetry & Flash Fiction Competitions

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The deadline for entries to the 2023 Allingham Poetry and Flash Fiction Competitions is being extended to Friday, 29 September. On-line and postal entries must be received by 23:59 on the 29th. Competition rules and entry forms are found at www.allinghamfestival.com.

In addition to the cash prizes of €300, the first-place winner in the 2023 Allingham Poetry Competition will also receive the newly-created Francis Harvey Poetry Award, and the first-place winner in the Flash Fiction Competition will receive the Keane Family Award.

First-, second- and third-place winners will be invited to read their work in the on-line Awards Ceremony on Friday, 10 November. Poetry entries are being judged by Kate Newmann of Summer Palace Press; Flash Fiction by Alan McMonagle (Ithaca, Laura Cassidy’s Walk of Fame).

The 2023 Allingham Festival (Nov 8-12 in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal) will include a conversation with best-selling domestic noir author Liz Nugent, readings by acclaimed children’s author Shane Hegarty, and a regional meeting of the WORD organisation of professional and aspiring writers.