FREE event - no need to book
Venue: Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, United States
Irish author Jan Carson joins us to discuss her award winning story collection QUICKLY, WHILE THEY STILL HAVE HORSES.
About this Event
The Books & Books Literary Foundation and the Consulate General of Ireland in Miami are proud to present an afternoon with Jan Carson discussing Quickly, While They Still Have Horses (Scribner, $17.99). At this special event, the Consul General of Ireland in Miami, Sarah Kavanagh, will interview author Jan Carson. An award-winning writer, Jan’s latest book “Quickly, While They Still Have Horses” is the first of her works to be published in North America.
Born in Northern Ireland during the period of violence known as “The Troubles”, Jan was raised in a Protestant evangelical background. Her family are part of the rural Unionist/Loyalist community – thousands of whom emigrated to Appalachia in the eighteenth century. 26 years after the Good Friday Agreement, which the US helped to broker, ended widespread political violence in Northern Ireland, CG Kavanagh will speak with Jan about the major themes in her work including the complexities of political identity and the legacy of violence.
***Please note: This event will take place at the Books & Books in Coral Gables at 265 Aragon Ave. Tickets are FREE and books will be available for purchase at the event. Can't make the event?
About the Book:
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.
About the Author:
Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. She is the author of several short story collections and novels including Malcolm Orange Disappears, The Raptures, The Last Resort, and The Fire Starters, winner of the EU Prize for Literature. She has won the Harper’s Bazaar short story competition and been shortlisted for many awards, including the BBC National Short Story Award, the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize, and the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year. Jan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and her writing has been translated into over a dozen languages, appeared in numerous journals, and been frequently broadcast on BBC Radio. Quickly, While They Still Have Horses is her first book to be published in North America.
About the Moderator:
Sarah Kavanagh took up her post as Consul General of Ireland in Miami in October 2022 and is leading the establishment of Ireland’s first Consulate General in Florida. The consular area also includes Mississippi, Alabama, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
Ms. Kavanagh served in a senior capacity as a Government Adviser during the period 2014-2020 including in the Department of Justice and Equality and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She was part of the core Irish Government team at two rounds of talks in Northern Ireland, both of which resulted in Agreements (the Stormont House Agreement and the Fresh Start Agreement).
A barrister by training, she has also worked on a wide variety of human rights issues in both foreign and domestic contexts.