To celebrate pride month, we’ve picked eleven of our favourite queer stories for you to add to your reading list. From contemporary classics to anthologies and oral histories, these books from Irish authors are essential reads.
Sunburn, by Chloe Michelle Howarth
A slow-burning sapphic coming-of-age story, Sunburn tracks the tender longing of Lucy in a conservative Irish village in the early 1990s. Feeling out of place despite her fierce friendships, Lucy has always felt that the conventional path of marriage and motherhood wasn’t for her. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend. Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love. Honourable mention must also go to Heap Earth Upon It, Chloe Michelle Howarth’s second novel, set in the 1960s, following the orphaned O’Leary siblings—Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy—as they arrive in the village of Ballycrea, tight-lipped about their troubled past and desperate for a fresh start.
Evenings and Weekends, by Oisín McKenna
Drogheda-born, London-based spoken word artist, writer, and novelist Oisín McKenna’s electrifying debut will make you want to go to a rave and call you mam all at once. Set over one pivotal weekend in London, a blistering heat wave seems to make everything come to a head for the book’s central characters, each of which is teetering on the precipice of something new. There’s Maggie, pregnant, broke, and unready to leave her carefree city lifestyle behind, and her partner, Ed, a man fixated with death and pursuing contentment at all costs, even if it means sacrificing a crucial part of himself.
At Swim, Two Boys, by Jamie O’Neill
A contemporary Irish classic, At Swim, Two Boys is a shimmering novel of unforgettable ambition, intensity and humanity. Out at the Forty Foot, that great jut of Dublin rock where gentlemen bathe in the scandalous nude, two boys meet day after day. There they make a pact: that Doyler will teach Jim to swim, and in a year, they will swim the bay to the distant beacon of the Muglins rock, to raise the Green and claim it for themselves. As a turbulent year drives inexorably towards the Easter Rising of 1916 and Ireland sets forth on a path to uncertain glory, a tender, secret love story unfolds.
Wild Geese, by Soula Emmanuel
Heralded as one of the most exciting new voices in Irish writing, Soula Emmanuel’s debut novel, Wild Geese earned her the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction, and the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize at the UK Society of Authors Awards. New home, new name and newly thirty: Phoebe Forde has stepped into emigrant life in Copenhagen with her anxious dog, Dolly. Almost three years into her gender transition, she has learned to move through the world carefully, savouring small moments of joy. A woman without a past can be anyone she wants – that is, until an unexpected visit from Grace, her first love, brings memories of Dublin and a life she thought she’d left behind. Over the course of a single weekend, as their old romance kindles something sweet and radically unfamiliar, Grace helps Phoebe to navigate the jagged edges of migration, nostalgia and hope.
Slant, by Katherine O’Donnell
A ground-breaking Irish lesbian love story set across the decades from the 1980s AIDS crisis to the 2015 marriage referendum, Slant follows Ro McCarthy, single in her fifties and working a quiet job, sustained by her love of books and her deep friendships. Although she still doesn’t approve of marriage—not even for the straights—she is canvassing for Yes in the 2015 marriage equality referendum. But, as the ghosts of her activist past join her on the campaign trail and her eagerness to confront a familiar discrimination turns to obsession and fury, Ro must finally face the long-buried trauma and loss of her youth.
Open, Heaven, by Sean Hewitt
Open, Heaven is an exhilarating tale of hidden desire and sudden freedom in the wild countryside. James dreams of another life far away from his small village. Almost an adult, his newfound desires threaten to unravel his shy exterior. Then he meets Luke. Unkempt and handsome, charismatic and impulsive, he has been sent to stay with his aunt and uncle on a nearby farm. With the passing seasons, a bond emerges between them that transforms their lives. Yet James is never sure of Luke’s true feelings and as the end of summer nears, he has a choice to make: will he risk everything for the possibility of love?
Ordinary Saints, by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin
Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin is an Irish writer, living and working in Edinburgh, and her début novel, Ordinary Saints, is inspired by her own devout upbringing and presents her as an exciting new voice on the Irish literary scene asking the question: Who gets to decide how we are remembered — and who we will become? Brought up in a devout household in Ireland, Jay is now living in London with her girlfriend, determined to live day to day and not think too much about either the future or the past. But when she learns that her beloved older brother, who died in a terrible accident, may be made into a Catholic saint, she realises she must at last confront her family, her childhood and herself.
All Them Dogs, by Djamel White
A fizzing debut that drops you into West Dublin’s underworld, All Them Dogs is a propulsive crime novel with an unexpectedly tender edge. Things are different since Tony Ward landed back in town. After five years keeping quiet, Tony is keen to reinstate himself, and when the opportunity to work side by side with Darren ‘Flute’ Walsh, a top enforcer of notorious crime boss Angus Lavelle, it feels like a no brainer. Biting off more than he can chew has never bothered Tony Ward, but Flute Walsh is not the meek, quiet boy Tony remembers from school. Brooding, stoic, and unpredictably dangerous, Tony finds himself drawn to his new associate in more ways than one. With retribution from his past actions always close in the rear view, the protection offered by Flute’s standing in the gang is crucial. But how safe is Tony really, when a mutual attraction starts to complicate matters?
Filly, by Rosamund Taylor
From acclaimed poet Rosamund Taylor comes a compelling, genre-bending coming-of-age story. In the hostile world of Ireland’s secondary school system, Orla is discovering her burgeoning sexuality. When her friend Muireann rejects her advances, Orla turns to her online community for support, and to her charismatic English teacher Irene Wall for a love affair both passionate and annihilating. A novel in verse about sexual awakening, masochistic love, and the transformative possibilities of community, Filly introduces two unforgettable characters in Orla and the complicated and magnetic Irene Wall. Written with Taylor’s trademark earthy lyricism, Filly is an exploration of intergenerational love and trauma, and an explosion of queer joy.
Queer Love: An Anthology of Irish Fiction, by Paul McVeigh
Queer Love seeks to go some way to redress the lack of acknowledgement of the LGBTQI+ community in Irish literary anthologies, with a mixture of established writers of international standing, writers who have been making a splash in recent years and new emerging writers. The anthology has a mixture of previously published stories, newly commissioned work and those entered through our call out. Featuring stories by Emma Donoghue, Mary Dorcey, Neil Hegarty, James Hudson, Emer Lyons, Jamie O’Connell, Colm Tóibín, Declan Toohey, and Shannon Yee.
Reeling in the Queers: Tales of Ireland’s LGBTQ Past, by Páraic Kerrigan
Marking fifty years of the founding of an LGBTQ rights movement in Ireland, Reeling in the Queers explores the lesser-known stories of the fight for LGBTQ rights since 1974, beyond decriminalisation and Marriage Equality. From 1990s boy bands to the AIDS priest, Fr Bernárd Lynch, from the Belfast Lesbian Line to proud parenting, from the earliest Pride events to the last days of Alternative Miss Ireland, fourteen distinct moments map the changing social and cultural landscape of Ireland. Drawing from oral history as well as archives, Reeling in the Queers brings even more to life the great big queer tapestry in Ireland. Queer history in Ireland is Irish history and acknowledging and celebrating the light and the dark of it protects all of our futures as much as our pasts.