Arlen House

Dorothy Macardle (1889-1958) was a political activist, journalist, novelist, broadcaster, playwright and influential historian. This first biography traces her life from her involvement in the War of Independence to her role as a leading civil libertarian in the 1950s, and discusses her literary career and her international human rights work.

Poet Stephen James Smith's sympathies lie with the addicted and the convicted, often responding to what he finds on life's margins. His sharp-edged forceful language derives from his gifts as a performance poet and his fearlessness in looking into the eye of his subject matter.

Annie Smithson's third novel, Carmen Cavanagh, is for the most part set in 1911 in the wilds of Donegal and in cosmopolitan Dublin, and the story deals largely with the exacting life of district nurses and dispensary doctors where the calls of duty have to be met under the most trying conditions.

Dolores Stewart imagines and writes in the two tongues of Ireland.

In this debut collection from a poet whose reverence for nature is a constant and comforting aesthetic, the poems explore themes of innocence and experience. From the intimacy of personal loss to war and its cruel consequences, these poems are always surprising, always true.

This new collection creates and bravely explores the boundaries between predator and prey, between warning and transformation. Taylor's poems carve images from a chaotic world.

In Taylor's second collection of short stories, a woman locks a man in an aeroplane bathroom, two brothers rewrite their past, and strangers in an airport are thrown together through tragedy. Taylor explores confinement and expansion with both humour and angst, as characters are continually forced to redefine their personal landscapes.

Lisa C. Taylor's fourth poetry collection explores the range of human vulnerability from a homeless person to a Virgin Mary sighting, to strangers meeting in a grocery line.

A recent widow seeks the services of a psychic, two children are placed in a witness protection programme, a young woman is discovered hiding in a garden shed, and a doctor suddenly disappears. The characters in Taylor's debut collection of short stories inhabit worlds as familiar as your local restaurant and as strange as a locked ward in a psychiatric hospital.