Join Chapters Bookstore in welcoming award-winning poet, writer and lecturer Seán Hewitt in conversation with author Niamh Campbell on Wednesday 9th November.



Seán Hewitt’s memoir All Down Darkness Wide was published in 2022 to acclaim. In October, Seán was awarded The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and has been shortlisted for An Post’s Biography of the Year. Hewitt’s memoir follows his relationships, as he writes against the presumption that queer lives are destined to be unhappy.

 

All Down Darkness Wide is an unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender portrayal of what it’s like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one’s suffering. By turns devastating and soaring, it is a mesmerising story of heartache and renewal, and a work of rare and transcendent beauty. 

 

Seán Hewitt’s debut poetry collection Tongues of Fire (2020) won The Laurel Prize in 2021 and was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and a Dalkey Literary Award. In 2020, he was chosen by The Sunday Times as one of their "30 under 30" artists in Ireland. He is also the winner of a Northern Writers' Award, the Resurgence Prize, and an Eric Gregory Award.

 

His book J.M. Synge: Nature, Politics, Modernism is published with Oxford University Press (2021) and he edited the poetry collection Ten Poems from the Countryside (2021) and contributed to Andrew McMillan & Mary Jean Chan’s 100 Queer Poems (2022).

 

Niamh Campbell's debut novel This Happy was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2020, and nominated for the An Post Irish Book Awards, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, and the John McGahern Book Prize. In 2020 she won the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award for her story 'Love Many', and in 2021 she was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Her short work can be found in The Dublin Review, 3:AM, Banshee, Tangerine, Five Dials, Granta, and gorse. She has been funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and is 2021 Writer in Residence at University College Dublin. Her second novel We Were Young was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2022. She lives and works in Dublin. 

 

This event is ticketed, and spaces are limited, but free to attend. Drinks will be served, and copies of Seán Hewitt & Niamh Campbell’s books will be available to purchase on the night.

 

This event is proudly supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the NTESS 2022 initiative.