Constellations by Sinéad GleesonThe #1 Irish bestseller and winner of Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2019 An Post Irish Book Awards, Winner: 2020 Dalkey Literary Awards (Emerging Writer). Watch the announcement here: Shortlisted: 2020 Rathbones Folio Prize Shortlisted: 2020 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography (winner to be announced in August as part the Edinburgh Book Festival): Shortlisted: 2020 Royal Irish Academy’s Michel Déon Prize(winner will be announced later in 2020). 2019 overall Book of the Year, The Big Issue
Constellations was published in 2019 by Picador, followed by a paperback edition in April 2020. It was published in the US by Mariner / HMH books in March 2020
Foreign translations include Constellations : Éclats de vie (France, 2021, Éditions de La Table ronde); Konstellationen : Die Sprache meines Körpers (Germany, Btb Verg; 2021), Constellations (China, Folio, 2021) and forthcoming editions in Dutch (April 2022, HetMoet), Korean (2022) and Brazilian Portuguese (2022, Relicário Edições) “I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal. A map, a tracing of connections and a guide to looking at things from different angles.” How do you tell the story of a life in a body, as it goes through sickness, health, motherhood? How do you tell that story when you are not just a woman but a woman in Ireland? In these powerful and daring essays Sinéad Gleeson does that very thing. All of life is within these pages, from birth to first love, pregnancy to motherhood, terrifying sickness, old age and loss to death itself. Throughout this wide-ranging collection she also turns her restless eye outwards delving into work, art and our very ways of seeing. In the tradition of some of our finest life writers, and yet still in her own spirited, generous voice, Sinéad takes us on a journey that is both uniquely personal and yet universal in its resonance. Here is the fierce joy and pain of being alive.“Sinéad Gleeson has changed the Irish literary landscape, through her advocacy for the female voice. In Constellations, we finally hear her own voice, and it comes from the blood and bones of her body’s history. Sinéad Gleeson is an absolute force: if you want to know where passion and tenacity are born, read this book.” Anne Enright “These brilliant essays read as if Gleeson has made a vow to her readers to illuminate what it means to live in a human body—for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health—all the days of her life. Come for the dark jokes and existential dread. Stay for the beauty and tenderness.” —Jenny Offill, author of Weather, Dept. of Speculation”Constellations is a glitteringly brilliant book; daring in its voice, beautiful in its forms, challenging in its subjects. It dazzled me with its adventure and ambition. These essays stand as radiant single entities but also, over the book’s course, constellate into a larger structure of thought about what Gleeson calls ‘the story of a life in a body’. Political, poetic, tender and angry, this is a remarkable book and an astonishing debut.” — Robert MacFarlane “Utterly magnificent. Raw, thought-provoking and galvanising; this is a book every woman should read.” Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing “My god what an absolutely incredible book . . . It’s stunning . . . This is one of those you read every ten years and it changes you.” —Evie Wyld, author of All the Birds, Singing, The Bass Rock
Essays:
‘Sonic Seasonings: The Genius of Wendy Carlos’ in This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music ed. Sinéad Gleeson and Kim Gordon (White Rabbit, 2022)
‘Faraway Places Near Here: In Search Of Maeve Brennan’ in Where My Feet Fall: Going for a Walk in Twenty Stories, ed. Duncan Minshull (Harper Collins, March 2022)
‘Second Mother’ in Granta (2015)
‘Blue Hills and Chalk Bones‘ in Granta, (New Irish Writing issue, 2015)
‘Hibernia, Caledonia’, in Winter Papers Vol. 2 (edited by Kevin Barry and Olivia Smith)
‘Autumn at the Hell Fire Club’ in Autumn: An Anthology for the Changing Seasons (edited by Melissa Harrison)
‘Hair’ in literary journal Banshee (Issue 1)
Two radio essays have been broadcast on RTE Radio One’s Sunday Miscellany.
Fiction:
‘The Lexicon of Babies’ in Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber, 2019)
‘Infinite for Now’ in Repeal the 8th anthology (Unbound)
‘Counting Bridges’ in ‘Looking at the Stars’ (Munster Literature Centre)
As Editor:
This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music with Kim Gordon (White Rabbit, 2022)
Awards and nominations:
For Constellations:
Winner of Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the 2019 An Post Irish Book Awards,
Winner: 2020 Dalkey Literary Awards (Emerging Writer). Watch the announcement here:
Shortlisted: 2020 Rathbones Folio Prize
Shortlisted: 2020 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography
Shortlisted: 2020 Royal Irish Academy’s Michel Déon Prize
2019 overall Book of the Year, The Big Issue
Awards and nominations for other work:
2017: Longlisted for The Lifted Brow Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction for ‘Where Does it Hurt?’
The Long Gaze Back: Short Shorts by Irish Women Writers and The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women from the North of Ireland, won Best Irish Published Book at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards in 2015 and 2016.
‘Counting Bridges’ was longlisted for the 2016 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards in the short story category.
Sinéad is represented by Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White.