Announcing the next three books from Banshee Press

Gustav Parker Hibbett by Abbie McNeice

Lucy Sweeney Byrne by David Fagleman

Claire-Lise Kieffer by Emilija Jefremova

We are thrilled to announce our next three book acquisitions: the debut collection of poetry by Gustav Parker Hibbett, the second short story collection from Banshee Press author Lucy Sweeney Byrne, and the debut collection of short fiction from Claire-Lise Kieffer. Read more at The Bookseller. Stay tuned for more information in the coming months, and thanks as always to the Arts Council, whose support makes it possible for us to bring these outstanding titles to readers.

High Jump as Icarus Story by Gustav Parker Hibbett

July 2024, poetry

Just inside the track’s concentric
circus rings, at the football field’s
head, is where I learned to wear
the gaze of other people like a queen
wears feathers.

In High Jump as Icarus Story, Gustav Parker Hibbett gifts us visions of flight and falling. This stunningly accomplished debut deconstructs and redefines notions of Blackness, queerness, and masculinity through the lenses of myth, pop culture, and that most transcendent of sports – the high jump.

Formally inventive, these poems speak in a vulnerable, rapturous voice that urges us to reimagine our possible selves, while navigating a labyrinthine America that conjures its young into monsters. Taking us from the arroyos of New Mexico to a West Cork farm in winter, these meditations on beauty and the elusive nature of love are insightful and hard-won: the spirit triumphs, even when the body falls.

Gustav Parker Hibbett is a Black poet and essayist. They are originally from New Mexico and currently pursuing a PhD at Trinity College Dublin. They are a 2023 Obsidian Foundation Fellow and were selected as a runner-up for The Missouri Review’s 2022 Poem of the Year award. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Guernica, fourteen poems, The Stinging Fly, London Magazine, Adroit, and elsewhere.

Let’s Dance by Lucy Sweeney Byrne

October 2024, short fiction

I am forty, an age I never thought I’d be. But that only means that I have accumulated forty years of other ages, all of which brim and bubble within me, vying for attention. Now I am forty, which means I am all at once newborn, six, sixteen, twenty-seven, and forty. Sometimes even now, after all these years, I wake up in my bed beside my husband, and for a brief moment I have absolutely no idea where I am or who he is.

In Let’s Dance, Lucy Sweeney Byrne, in her signature hypnotic prose, explores subjects such as physicality, identity and disillusionment. Utilising forms ranging from flash fiction to novella, Let’s Dance is a glittering display of fiction’s ability to probe, startle and entertain.

Lucy Sweeney Byrne is the author of Paris Syndrome, a short story collection, published by Banshee Press, met with critical acclaim and shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Edge Hill Prize, the Kate O’Brien Award, the Butler Literary Award, and the John McGahern Prize. Lucy’s short fiction, essays and poetry have appeared in The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, Banshee, Southword, AGNI, Litro, Grist, 3:AM magazine, and other literary outlets. She also writes book reviews for The Irish Times.

Tenterhooks by Claire-Lise Kieffer

spring 2025, short fiction

The stubble on the boy’s head mimics the grass on the sloping green: a two on the sides, six on top, for biodiversity. Galway has her back turned to him, the cathedral, the hospital, the houses all facing towards the sea. He is a black cut-out against the carpet of city lights, the Clifton Hill reservoir behind him.

An eerie discovery at a building site triggers a crisis for a garda and his family. A grieving woman comes to believe that she is being possessed by the spirit of her mother, and seeks an unusual exorcism. A brave new world is established as Galway disappears slowly underwater. And a young woman experiences the morning after the night before in a strange, condemned midlands town. 

In these stories of an Ireland both strange and achingly familiar, Claire-Lise Kieffer animates our collective past, present and future. Humorous, off-kilter, savage and surreal, she depicts the bonds that hold couples, families and communities together with a sharp, humane and deeply original slant.

Claire-Lise Kieffer’s short fiction has appeared in literary journals Banshee, Crossways and The Honest Ulsterman among others. She is a recipient of the 2022 Arts Council Agility Award. She is Franco-German and lives in Galway.