Writers
Skein Press was established in June 2017 to foster and publish writers whose work is fresh and thought-provoking and features outlooks and experiences not often represented in Irish publishing.
Majed Mujed
Majed was born in Iraq in 1971 and has lived in Ireland since 2015. One of the founders of the Iraqi House of Poetry, he worked as a journalist and publisher in the Iraqi cultural press for twenty years. He has published five collections of poetry in Arabic and has garnered awards for his work from the Al Mada Cultural Foundation, Iraqi House of Wisdom and Iraqi Intellectuals Conference. In 2021,he was one of the inaugural recipients of a Play It Forward Fellowship from the Arts Council of Ireland.
In a series of evocative vignettes, celebrated Iraqi poet Majed Mujed lyrically traverses the fraught landscapes of beauty, longing and resistance in a country at war. The Book of Trivialities, originally written in the poet’s native Arabic, is beautifully rendered into English by award-winning translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid.
Buy the e-book here
Kareem James Abu-Zeid
Kareem James Abu-Zeid, PhD is a freelance translator of poets and novelists from across the Arab world who translates from Arabic, French, and German. His work has won numerous awards and accolades, including the 2022 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation for the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish’s book Exhausted on the Cross (NYRB Poets, 2021). He is also the author of The Poetics of Adonis and Yves Bonnefoy: Poetry as Spiritual Practice (Lockwood, 2019). His most recent translation is Chaos, Crossing by Olivia Elias (WorldPoetry Books, 2022). The online hub for his work is http://www.kareemjamesabuzeid.com.
In a series of evocative vignettes, celebrated Iraqi poet Majed Mujed lyrically traverses the fraught landscapes of beauty, longing and resistance in a country at war. The Book of Trivialities, originally written in the poet’s native Arabic, is beautifully rendered into English by award-winning translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid.
Buy the e-book here
Deirdre Sullivan
Deirdre Sullivan is an award-winning writer and teacher from Galway. She has written eight books for young adults, including Savage Her Reply (Little Island 2020), and a collection of short fiction, I Want To Know That I Will Be Okay (Banshee Press 2021).
Weave is the second of the Solstice Stories, an innovative series designed to celebrate the small, the brilliant, and the beautiful. In this unique collaboration, writers Deirdre Sullivan and Oein DeBhairduin and artist Yingge Xu explore their shared passion for storytelling, folklore and ritual. Encompassing eight stories inspired by the eight festivals in the wheel of the year, this book illuminates our experiences and traverses our fears, intertwining older threads with contemporary spaces.
This book is designed in tête-bêche format and is exquisitely illustrated by Yingge Xu.
Jayne A. Quan
Jayne A. Quan is, in no particular order, a queer, transmasculine, non-binary Asian American who received their Master of Arts from University College Dublin. Their work has been featured in Banshee, Call & Response, First Person PBS, and Advice for and from the Future. They were shortlisted for the 2019 Cosmonauts Avenue Non-Fiction Prize. They grew up in the sunshine off the coast of California, worked as a photographer in New York, and enjoyed the rain in Dublin, Ireland. Controversially, they claim to love cats and dogs equally.
Essays exploring the intersection of loss, grief, memory and the power of love and healing through the lens of a body in motion.
Mícheál McCann
Mícheál McCann is from Derry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Ireland Review, The Manchester Review, and Queering the Green. He is the author of two pamphlets, Safe Home (Green Bottle Press, 2020) and Keeper (fourteen poems, 2022).
Through poetry, imagery and lyric prose, writers Kerri ní Dochartaigh and Mícheál McCann in collaboration with photographer Michelle Moloney explore the seeds of beginnings and endings, and the search for places where we find ourselves and each other. Filled with hope and elegy, these evocative reflections offer a measure of grace, solace and renewal.
Photo: Manus Kenny Kerri ní Dochartaigh
Kerri ní Dochartaigh is the author of Thin Places (Canongate, 2020) which was highly commended by the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2021. She has written for the Guardian, the Irish Times, the BBC, Winter Papers, and others. Her second book, Cacophony of Bone, is forthcoming in April 2023.
Through poetry, imagery and lyric prose, writers Kerri ní Dochartaigh and Mícheál McCann in collaboration with photographer Michelle Moloney explore the seeds of beginnings and endings, and the search for places where we find ourselves and each other. Filled with hope and elegy, these evocative reflections offer a measure of grace, solace and renewal.
Image credit: Derek Speirs Rosaleen McDonagh
Rosaleen McDonagh is a playwright, performer, columnist for The Irish Times and a member of Aosdána. Her plays include The Baby Doll Project, She’s Not Mine, Rings, The Prettiest Proud Boy and Mainstream. Her most recent commissions were Walls and Windows for the Abbey Theatre and Contentious Spaces for the Project Arts Centre. Rosaleen holds a BA, two MPhils from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD from Northumbria University. She is a board member of Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre and was appointed a Human Rights Commissioner in June 2020. Unsettled is her first book.
Oein DeBhairduin
Oein DeBhairduin is a writer, activist and educator with a passion for preserving the beauty of Traveller tales, sayings, retellings and historic exchanges. Oein is the author of the award-winning Why the moon travels and Weave. He is the Traveller Culture Collections Development Officer with the National Museum of Ireland and seeks to pair community activism with cultural celebration, recalling old tales with fresh modern connections and, most of all, he wishes to rekindle the hearth fires of a shared kinship.
A tale rooted in the oral tradition of the Irish Traveller community told by award-winning author Oein DeBhairduin and illustrated by Olya Anima, co-published by Irish presses Little Island and Skein Press
Weave is the second of the Solstice Stories, an innovative series designed to celebrate the small, the brilliant, and the beautiful. In this unique collaboration, writers Deirdre Sullivan and Oein DeBhairduin and artist Yingge Xu explore their shared passion for storytelling, folklore and ritual. Encompassing eight stories inspired by the eight festivals in the wheel of the year, this book illuminates our experiences and traverses our fears, intertwining older threads with contemporary spaces.
This book is designed in tête-bêche format and is exquisitely illustrated by Yingge Xu.
A haunting collection rooted in the oral tradition of the Irish Traveller community.
Buy the audiobook here
Buy the e-book here
Melatu Uche Okorie
Melatu Uche Okorie is a writer and scholar. Born in Nigeria, she moved to Ireland in 2006. It was during her eight and a half years living in the direct provision system that she began to write. She has an M. Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin, and has had works published in numerous anthologies. In 2009, she won the Metro Éireann Writing Award for her story ‘Gathering Thoughts’.
Melatu has a strong interest in the rights of asylum seekers and migrant education in Ireland and is currently studying for a PhD in Education at Trinity College, Dublin. This Hostel Life is her first book.