Beth Ann Fennelly for The Irish Goodbye

Overview

"Beth Ann Fennelly’s writing flickers and shimmers like minnows just below the water’s surface—quick, sharp, and radiantly alive. Each of these pieces is a marvel of compression and care, where humor sidles up next to heartbreak, and ordinary moments are cast in an enticing, golden light that makes you want to lean in closer, listen harder." - Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Bite by Bite and World of Wonders

Join us as we welcome Beth Ann Fennelly for the launch of her new collection The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs, a genre–defying volume that explores family, marriage, motherhood, place and coming of age with singular wit and emotional clarity.

About the book

"This book knocked me sideways. I tore through it in a day and I’m still trying to catch my breath....I’ve long been a fan of Fennelly’s work, but The Irish Goodbye is her best book yet." - Jamie Quatro, author of Two-Step Devil

What can we learn from an ordinary life observed with extraordinary skill? In The Irish Goodbye, Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the often–overlooked moments that shape a life, whether moving or perplexing or troubling or gladdening.

These micro–memoirs—some as short as a sentence, some longer in form–dignify the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles as a friend, wife, mother, and daughter, documenting a brush with an old flame or the devastating death of her sister in crystalline, precise sentences.

Full of unexpected wit, The Irish Goodbye is a record of the interstitial interactions—encounters with strangers, quirky observations, unexpected flights of fancy—that make up a richly lived life. With keen insight and nimble prose, Fennelly invites readers to share her affirming worldview—one in which even our smallest interactions are rife with possibility.