The 2010s will go down as an extremely significant decade in Irish literature in both of our official languages. The bailout and its aftermath affected the country heterogeneously and the literary scream in response to this uneven scourging was delivered in uneven voices: younger, more rural, less aspirational, more accented. While the Celtic Tiger wrote about the recent past with the smugness of a returned backpacker dropping off a year’s worth of laundry, these new voices had a distinctly different sense of the past, the present and the future… and everything in between.

It was in this environment that Lisa Coen and her business partner Sarah Davis-Goff set up Tramp Press, an independent publisher which has released two Books of the Year in the past three years, as well as clocking up a dizzying array of other prizes. 

In today’s episode, Lisa talks to Darach about the circumstances that gave birth to this publishing phenomenon and the mission that drives them forward. She explains the significance of the company’s name and of tramps in Irish literature. She schools Darach’s big jackeen head on the secrets of Shoe Corner and the nearest ATM and tells of the urgent relevance of the outsider’s stories.

And yes, they talk about Irish too!

You can find out more about Tramp Press at https://www.tramppress.com 

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Get Kirsten Shiel art prints here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/kirstenshiel/ 

Support for this episode comes from Foras na Gaeilge - https://www.forasnagaeilge.ie/

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