*VIRTUAL* Louise Kennedy: Trespasses

November 12th, 2022

1:00pm PST

Click here to register on Crowdcast!

Bookshop West Portal is thrilled to host Louise Kennedy for her debut novel Trespasses. Louise Kennedy will be in conversation with beloved local Irish author of In the Event of Contact Ethel Rohan! We're so grateful to Ethel Rohan for hosting this latest installment of our Irish Writer's Series.

This event is free to attend and will be held virtually on Crowdcast, as we are hosting Louise Kennedy from Ireland!

Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, a shattering novel about a young woman caught between allegiance to community and unsanctioned love.

Amid daily reports of sectarian violence, Cushla is living a quiet life with her mother in a small town near Belfast. By day she teaches at a parochial school, and at night she fills in at her family’s pub. It’s there that she meets Michael Agnew, a barrister who’s made a name for himself defending IRA members. Against her better judgment – Michael is not only Protestant but older, and married – Cushla lets herself get drawn in by him and his sophisticated world, and an affair ignites. Then the father of a student is savagely beaten, setting in motion a chain reaction that will threaten everything, and everyone, Cushla most wants to protect.
 
As tender as it is unflinching, Trespasses is a heart-pounding, heart-rending drama of thwarted love and irreconcilable loyalties, in a place what you come from seems to count more than what you do, or whom you cherish.

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LOUISE KENNEDY grew up near Belfast. Trespasses is her first novel. She is also the author of a collection of short stories, The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac. She has written for the Guardian, the Irish Times, and BBC Radio 4. Before becoming a writer, she worked as a chef for almost thirty years. She lives in Sligo, Ireland.

ETHEL ROHAN is the author of In the Event of Contact, winner of the Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize (2021). Her debut novel The Weight of Him (St. Martin's Press and Atlantic Books, 2017) was an Amazon, Bustle, KOBO, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book, and was shortlisted for the Reading Women Award. She is also the author of the story collections Goodnight Nobody and Cut Through the Bone, the former longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and the latter longlisted for the Story Prize. Her work has appeared widely, including The New York Times, World Literature Today, The Washington Post, PEN America, Tin House, Guernica, and more. Raised in Ireland, she lives in San Francisco where she is a member of the Writers Grotto.