Mia Gallagher
Mia Gallagher collaborated with Kaffe Matthews to create Ya slip ta bang for Dublin Science Gallery.
Mia is a novelist and performer based in Dublin. She is the author of two acclaimed novels: HellFire (Penguin Ireland, 2006), winner of the Irish Tatler Literature Award (2007), and Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland (New Island, 2016), longlisted for the inaugural Republic of Consciousness Award (UK, 2016) and chosen for the Irish Times Book Club in February 2017. Mia’s essays, reviews and award-winning short fiction have been widely published at home and abroad. Last year she was guest-editor of the Stinging Fly’s special issue Fear & Fantasy. Mia was recently appointed as the 2017 Writer-in-Residence at Farmleigh House (Phoenix Park, Dublin) and has just been awarded a Literature Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to work on her next novel.
More about Mia’s most recent novel:
Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland was widely praised for its moving characterisation and audacious, experimental structure. Reaching across the island of Ireland, from past to present, lunging deep into European history and catapulting out into a strange, surreal parallel universe, it was hailed by The Guardian as a ‘fascinating work of art’ and lauded by Joseph O’Connor, Mike McCormack and Paul Murray, among others.
- Included in The Guardian’s top summer reads 2016
- Included in The Irish Times top books of 2016
Selected quotes
“There is so much to say about this novel. It is sprawling, but not sloppy; messy, but not a mess. There will be as many readings of it as there are readers. Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland is challenging, it is brave, it is original, it is flawed, it is moving, it is fascinating. It is art.” – Claire Kilroy writing in The Guardian
“Gallagher’s writing is brilliant…Though somewhat baffling on the surface, Beautiful Pictures . . . is strangely coherent up close, like a magic-eye picture… a writer who doesn’t miss, or forget, a trick.” – The Irish Times
“Comparisons with Joyce are inevitable…a gripping page-turner.” – The Sunday Business Post
“Beautiful Pictures is no conventional door-stopper – it’s more of a portal-stopper; it’s no airport novel, it’s more a rocket launch pad novel! Everything about this book is surprising… in its scope, this book is indescribable. Gothically vibrant… always uplifted by striking details… [An] electric and disturbing read.” – Rosemary Jenkinson
“Nothing came near Mia Gallagher’s Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland for bravery and ambition this year. A skilful and fearless exploration of place, time and identity… a new generation of Irish writers may well take their lead from it.” – Mike McCormack in The Sunday Independent
“I adored this thrillingly ambitious novel, which is intriguing, strange, yet seductive, too, in such clever and nuanced ways. A sheer pleasure to read.” – Joseph O’Connor
“A pitch-perfect rendering of Dublin today and yesterday, a devastating portrait of a family in grief, and a haunting account of the past’s pull on the present. As thrilling and inventive, as it is moving and profound.” – Paul Murray, author of Skippy Dies
