Between the Lines: Meet Dublin's Tramp Press

Lisa Coen is co-founding publisher of Tramp Press. Before that, she worked for Hot Press magazine and The Lilliput Press. She wrote a PhD thesis in Trinity College Dublin on Irish theatre, and has contributed to The Oxford Handbook of Irish Theatre and the occasional journal. Lisa is from Mayo, but remains an optimist.

Photo credit: Bríd O'Donovan

Sarah Davis-Goff co-founded Tramp Press with Lisa Coen in 2014. Before that she worked with The Lilliput Press, Dalkey Archive Press. She has an MA in Publishing from Oxford Brookes University. Sarah has written about publishing, literature and gender issues for the Irish Times, the Guardian and LitHub, and has a novel coming out with Tinder Press in 2019. She lives in Dublin.

Photo credit: Bríd O'Donovan

Caroline B. Heafey studied English and French Literature at Fordham University before pursuing her MA Glucksman Ireland House NYU. She specializes in Irish literature, having focused on the prison writings of Dorothy Macardle in her MA thesis. She now works in administration in the Department of Irish and Irish-American Studies at NYU and continues to research and write about Irish women writers. Her research interests include transnationalism, modernism, trauma, and women's prison narratives from periods of social conflict.

A comedy star in her native Ireland, Maeve Higgins has performed all over the world, including in Edinburgh, Melbourne and, most recently, Erbil. Now based in New York, she’s made a name for herself there too. In a good way! She co-hosts Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk on National Geographic and has appeared in Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer. Maeve hosts Butterboy, a live weekly show with Aparna Nancherla and Jo Firestone. Her podcast, “Maeve in America,” launched in 2016 and quickly became a critical and commercial success. She writes regularly for The New York Times and is contracted to write a new book of essays for Penguin, due for publication in August 2018.

Mike McCormack is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from Mayo. His previous work includes Getting it in the Head (1995), Crowe’s Requiem (1998), Notes from a Coma (2005), which was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award, and Forensic Songs (2012). In 1996 he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and in 2007 he was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. In 2016 he won the Goldsmiths Prize and two Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award for Best Novel and Book of the Year for Solar Bones. The novel also longlisted for the Man Booker, and was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Kerry Group Irish Novel Award and the Dublin International Literary Award. Mike lives in Galway.

Sam Underwood is the artistic director/founder of Fundamental Theater Project, a non-profit dedicated to supporting international artists. As an actor, he most recently starred in AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead. Other credits include Fox’s hit drama The Following opposite Kevin Bacon, in which he played twins Mark and Luke; Showtime’s Dexter and Homeland; and Power on STARZ. His stage work includes Peter Shaffer’s Equus opposite Alec Baldwin, Hamlet opposite Alec Baldwin and Kate Mulgrew, Candida at the Irish Rep, and the world premiere of Tennessee Williams’ In Masks Outrageous and Austere opposite Shirley Knight. Underwood is also the founder and creative director of production company Initiative | 26.

Maeve Kelly, an Irish novelist, short-story writer and poet, was born in Ennis, Co. Clare and educated in Dundalk. She was a founding member of the limerick Federation of Women’s Organisations and the Limerick Refuge for Battered Wives, now called Adapt House, where she was an administrator for fifteen years. In 1972 she won the Hennessy literary award. She is the author of two short story collections, A Life of Her Own (1976) and Orange Horses (1990); a satirical fairytale, Alice in Thunderland (1993); the novels Necessary Treasons (1985) and Florrie’s Girls (1989); and two collections of poetry, Resolution (1986) and Lament for Oona (2005). Kelly’s work has been translated into several European languages and has been broadcast on RTÉ and BBC. Kelly’s A Last Loving: Collected Poems (2016) was recently published by the Irish press Arlen House.

Dorothy Macardle (1889-1958), an Irish novelist, playwright, journalist and historian, was born in Dundalk in 1889 to a wealthy brewing family, and educated at Alexandra College and University College, Dublin. A Republican and member of Cumann na mBan, Macardle was imprisoned for her activities during the Irish Civil War, and later worked as a journalist with The Irish Press. Her monumental history, The Irish Republic, was published in 1937, and her account of the plight of children in war-torn Europe, Children of Europe, in 1949. Her plays were produced at the Abbey and Gate Theatres, and among her works of fiction are Earth-Bound: Nine Stories of Ireland (1924), Uneasy Freehold/The Uninvited (1942, and republished by Tramp Press in 2015), and Fantastic Summer/The Unforeseen (1946). She died in Drogheda in 1958.