Irish Arts Center and Farrar, Straus and Giroux present
Mary Costello
in association with Stinging Fly

Moderated by American writer Mary Beth Keane (author of The Walking People and Fever)

Wednesday, May 6 | 7:30 pm

“Mary Costello is a very gifted writer and this is a beautifully written novel.” – The Irish Times

“Costello’s debut novel draws an extraordinarily compelling narrative from the quiet life of an Irish emigrant…When Mary Costello’s debut collection, The China Factory, appeared in 2012, it was clear that here was a writer of huge ability…She captures with great acuity the complex inner world that makes Tess both withdrawn and desperate to experience life…Hers is a quiet life, but one with an enormous impact on the reader.” —The Guardian

Join us as Mary Costello reads from her compelling debut novel Academy Street—a vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman’s life, from an important new writer.

Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely—a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with. Academy Street is Mary Costello’s luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess from her girlhood in western Ireland through her relocation to America and her life there, concluding with a moving reencounter with her Irish family after forty years of exile. The novel has a hypnotic pull and a steadily mounting emotional force. It speaks of disappointments but also of great joy. It shows how the signal events of the last half century affect the course of a life lived in New York City.

“With extraordinary devotion, Mary Costello brings to life a woman who would otherwise have faded into oblivion amid the legions of the meek and the unobtrusive.” —JM Coetzee

“Academy Street is understated, graceful and, ultimately, devastating. Even as my heart was breaking I couldn't put the book down.” —Donal Ryan, author of The Spinning Heart

Mary Costello grew up in Galway and now lives in Dublin. Her collection of stories, The China Factory, was nominated for the 2012 Guardian first book award. Her first novel, Academy Street, won the 2014 Eason’s Novel of the Year and the Irish Book of the Year prizes and was shortlisted for the Costa first novel prize. 

Previous Debut Voices authors include Darragh McKeon, author of All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, and Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing.