Author Jan Carson will read from and discuss her new short story collection, Quickly, While They Still Have Horses (Scribner, July 2024).
Book Description:
A surreal and darkly comic collection of stories that offer a fresh and irreverent look at life in contemporary Northern Ireland from “one of the most exciting and original Northern Irish writers of her generation” (The Sunday Times, London).
Humorous and horrifying, tender and absurd, the stories in Quickly, While They Still Have Horses offer a fresh, irreverent look at life in post-conflict Northern Ireland. From first loves to strained relationships, the thrills and terrors of growing up to the dangers and challenges of parenthood, Carson infuses all her stories with empathy, dark wit, and a surreal edge.
In “A Certain Degree of Ownership,” a distracted couple on a beach fail to notice their baby crawl perilously toward the sea. In “Grand So,” the ghost of a car’s previous owner haunts the backseat. In “Troubling the Water,” a rumor of miraculous healing creates chaos at a public swimming pool. Carson never fails to shock and delight as kids go missing in jungle gyms, a baby washes up on a riverbank in a biscuit tin, and a bloody hand appears (and reappears) in a refrigerator. Every so often, these stories travel into alternate versions of our world where pillars of fire are a new treatment for mental illness and animals deemed nonessential are going extinct by legislative orders.
While the legacy of the Troubles is never far from Carson’s mind, it is only a backdrop to the worlds she’s woven in these stories, driven by characters who feel real enough to touch. This stunning collection marks the arrival of a “bracingly fresh, darkly funny, [and] unwaveringly compassionate” (The Irish News) writer to North American readers.
Speaker Biography
Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. She has published three novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019. Jan’s latest novel, The Raptures was
published by Doubleday in early 2022 and was subsequently shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her short story collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses was recently published by Scribner in July 2024.
This event is co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program.