Jenni Fagan

During the sixteenth century witch trials, over a hundred women were accused of summoning up a storm to destroy the ship carrying the future Scottish Queen across the sea from Denmark. Starting on the day of her execution, Gillis Duncan recounts the circumstances of her arrest, torture, confession and trial, in a powerful and gripping journey into a space where myth, religion and reality combine with deadly consequences. Offering a visceral depiction of a culture of fear and superstition, Fagan explores the lingering connections between womanhood and the occult, and the obsessive mania of a king who saw the threat of demons and witches all around him. Devils, ghouls, cauldrons, ectoplasm, physic powers and black magic combine in a haunting tale by one of Scotland's most exciting and innovative writers.

Luckenbooth

"From the highly acclaimed author of The Panopticon and one of Granta's Best Young British Writers comes the new novel THE SUNLIGHT PILGRIMS. Set in a Scottish caravan park during a freak winter u it is snowing in Jerusalem, the Thames is overflowing, and an iceberg separated from the Fjords in Norway is expected to arrive off the coast of Scotland u The Sunlight Pilgrims tells the story of a small Scottish community living through what people have begun to think is the end of times. Bodies are found frozen in the street with their eyes open, midst economic collapse, schooling and health care are run primarily on a voluntary basis. Dylan, a refugee from panic-stricken London who is grieving for his mother and his grandmother, arrives in the caravan park in the middle of the night u to begin his life anew. Under the lights of the aurora borealis, he is drawn to his neighbour Constance, a woman who is known for having two lovers, her eleven-year old daughter Stella, who is struggling to navigate changes in her own life, and elderly Barnacle, so crippled that he walks facing the earth. But as the temperature drops, daily life carries on: people get out of bed, they make a cup of tea, they fall in love, they complicate. The Sunlight Pilgrims, the thrilling follow-up to The Panopticon, is a humane, sad, funny, shimmeringly odd and beautiful novel about absence, about the unknowability of mothers. It is a story about people in extreme circumstances finding one another, and finding themselves."

The Sunlight Pilgrims

Eve Lacey

A Poetry Anthology of Women Warriors

Furies

Sent to a home for chronic offenders, fifteen-year-old foster child Anais considers her bleak life in the hands of untrustworthy adults before discovering herself within an ad hoc family that helps her take first steps toward personal strength.

A Novel

The Panopticon

Like everyone else in the Panopticon, 15-year-old Anais Hendricks has been in and out of foster care practically since birth. "[B]orn in a nuthouse to nobody that was ever seen again," she had her only successful foster placement with a prostitute later stabbed to death (Anais found the body). She's been sent to this facility, where the inmates are under constant surveillance, because she had a bad history with a policewoman who has been bludgeoned into a coma, and Anais--almost permanently whacked on whatever drug she can lay her hands on--can't explain why she has blood on her skirt. Amid the institution's crescent-shaped buildings and all-seeing watchtower, Anais befriends a group of ragtag ruffians and delves into her past, endlessly stoned and concerned she's being watched by an entity she calls "the experiment."

a novel

The panopticon

This new book, The Witch in the Word Machine, is a collection that underpins Jenni Fagan's entire approach to words. Her spell poems are portraits of people, lovers and cities: Paris, New York, Edinburgh, Detroit, LA, and San Francisco. The excerpts of her Truth poem are a political response to great uncertainty in the world right now.This collection is an exploration of words as spells, incantations, curse and solace.

The Witch in the Word Machine

These poems are alive with electricity, pulsating with a frequency that vibrates throughout. In a journey from there to here, The Bone Library examines and interprets all of human life. Throughout the collection Jenni Fagan responds to broader themes of identity, of place, of love and the unloved. Written in the old Dick Vet Bone Library during the author's time as writer-in-residence there, this is a vivid exploration that is honest and searching and cuts to the very core of what it is to be alive.

The Bone Library

Panoptikon

Dylan n'a jamais connu pareil bonheur : le sourire étourdissant de Constance, la joie de Stella qui court parmi les enfants sur la pelouse. Les flammes bondissent et illuminent les visages des habitants de la communauté de Clachan Fells, qui festoient à la lueur du feu crépitant. Alors que l'apocalypse gronde, tous ont décidé de vivre de lumière, de gin et de se préparer, ensemble, à la fin du monde.

Les buveurs de lumière

‘Truly one of the very best writers we have’ - Niall Griffiths ‘The patron saint of literary street urchins’ - The New York Times ‘Memorable and visceral’- Stuart Kelly on The Dead Queen of Bohemia There’s a Witch in the Word Machine is a collection that underpins Jenni Fagan’s entire approach to words. Her spell poems are portraits of people, lovers and cities: Paris, New York, Edinburgh, Detroit, L. A. and San Francisco. This collection is an exploration of words as spells, incantations, curse and solace.

A new collection from the author of 'The Panopticon'

There's a Witch in the Word Machine

Anais Hendricks ist fünfzehn und sitzt auf dem Rücksitz eines Polizeiautos. Ihre Schuluniform ist blutverschmiert, und am anderen Ende der Stadt liegt eine Polizistin im Koma. Doch Anais kann sich da an nichts erinnern. Jetzt ist sie auf dem Weg ins Panoptikum, eine Besserungsanstalt für schwer erziehbare Jugendliche, die für das Waisenkind am Ende einer langen Kette von Heimen und Pflegefamilien steht. Das Panoptikum, ein ehemaliges Gefängnis im Niemandsland der Provinz, scheint wie gemacht für Anais, die mittlerweile sowieso denkt, sie sei ein Experiment, das Objekt einer Reihe von Versuchen, die zeigen sollen, wann ein Mensch zerbricht. Während Anais mit ihrer schwierigen Vergangenheit ringt und sich mit Mut und Fantasie durch ein Leben boxt, das ihr einen Schlag nach dem anderen versetzt, findet sie in den anderen Jugendlichen des Panoptikums fast so etwas wie eine Familie. Eine Familie, die sich ihre eigenen Mythen und Legenden schafft und deren Bande stärker sind als das System, aus dem es scheinbar kein Entkommen gibt. Es sei denn, du hast ein Haifischherz und Freunde, die dir helfen, ihm zu folgen ...

Das Mädchen mit dem Haifischherz

The Dead Queen of Bohemia is a journey through a life lived on the edge. With a poetic style influenced by Gertrude Stein and William Burroughs, this collection is woven with surrealistic imagery that is both unflinching and dislocating. Fagan's poetry is raw and tough yet beautiful and tender and with themes of loss and recovery, hope and defiance, represents a clarion call from a self-taught poet who started writing at the age of seven and so far has not stopped. The Dead Queen of Bohemia documents the progression of a voice and a life written over the last twenty years. It opens with Jenni's most recent work and includes her previous two collections, both now out of print.

New & Collected Poems

The Dead Queen of Bohemia

Helen Oyeyemi

Will Eaves

Cynan Jones

Benjamin Markovits

There is in the short story, at its most characteristic, something we do not often find in the novel, Frank O’Connor wrote, ‘an intense awareness of human loneliness.’ The stories shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with BookTrust 2017 all feature characters that are disconnected, willingly or unwillingly, from those around them: a mysterious out-of-towner is shunned by her new colleagues; a grieving husband retreats into his old compulsion for hoarding; a promising academic risks his career for a casual liaison with a younger man. And whether we follow the characters’ need to be alone – like the fisherman drifting dangerously far from shore – or trace it back to its root – like the daughter burying her violent father – what we find there is always unexpected. Jenni Fagan, Benjamin Markovits and Helen Oyeyemi, three of Granta’s recent ‘20 under 40’, are joined by critic and novelist, Will Eaves and Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize winner, Cynan Jones on the 2017 shortlist. This year’s shortlist was selected by authors Eimear McBride, Jon McGregor and Sunjeev Sahota, as well as BBC Radio’s Di Speirs and acclaimed novelist Joanna Trollope who chaired the panel and introduces the collection.

Jenni Fagan

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