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Represented By: Sallyanne Sweeney
She has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from University College Cork. Her debut novel Red Dirt won Newcomer of the Year at the 2016 Irish Book Awards. In 2017, she was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
In recent years, she was Dublin UNESCO City of Literature Writer-in-Residence and Mayo County Council Writer-in-Residence. Her second novel Skin was released in 2019. She has a broad range of interests and is also a certified fitness instructor and hypnotherapist.
Represented By: Sallyanne Sweeney
She has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from University College Cork. Her debut novel Red Dirt won Newcomer of the Year at the 2016 Irish Book Awards. In 2017, she was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
In recent years, she was Dublin UNESCO City of Literature Writer-in-Residence and Mayo County Council Writer-in-Residence. Her second novel Skin was released in 2019. She has a broad range of interests and is also a certified fitness instructor and hypnotherapist.
Author: E.M. Reapy
Genre: Fiction
Natalie, its protagonist, is uncomfortable in her own skin. Her most recent relationship is long since over and she’s become disillusioned with her career as a teacher adopting a tried-and-tested attempt at self-discovery, she packs her bags to go travelling.
Natalie travels to Bali, New Zealand, Australia, Dublin, rural Ireland and the Netherlands to try and find her place, but her isolation abroad only heightens her sense of unease. Her journey is psychological as well as physical she is obsessed with her shape, believing herself to be awkward and over-large, recoiling from relationships with men and eating compulsively as a self-destructive reaction to her issues with her weight.
As the narrative unfolds, we gradually become aware of a crucial development in Natalie beginning to take place. This novel engages powerfully with issues that are important to women, and also to people in general, via an incredibly beguiling protagonist she is intelligent and self-aware, sharp and acute, and able to see the comic side of her predicament. An intensely enjoyable and thought-provoking read.
“A great piece of writing can make us feel less alone with our own pain and also make us more aware of other struggles that we might not otherwise have thought of. Skin is such a novel.”
- Tony Flynn, Books Ireland
Author: E.M. Reapy
Genre: Fiction
Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award Winner 2016
Three young Irish people have come to Australia, running from the economic ruins of their home country and their own unhappy lives. In this promised land, stunned by the heat and the vast arid space of the interior, they each try to escape their past in a chaotic world of backpacker hostels, huge fruit farms and squalid factories, surrounded by new friends who are even more damaged and dangerous than they are themselves. Endless supplies of cheap drink and drugs loosen what little sense of responsibility they have, and a spiral of self-destructive behaviour forces each of them to face up to the reality of their lives.
This is a story of the consequences of impulsive choices and of the places where they lead. A vulnerable young man is left alone by his friends in a remote wilderness; a desperate girl puts herself into the hands of violent sex traffickers; a once-privileged favourite son lets a drunken quarrel escalate to murder. An utterly compelling, readable novel that hooks from the first page and immerses us in an all-too topical nightmare.