Tramp Press reveals three-book list for 2020

Irish indie Tramp Press has acquired a three-book list for 2020 featuring new titles by Sara Baume, Doireann Ní Ghríofa and Jack Fennell.

The firm, approaching its seventh year of publishing, bagged Ireland and UK rights for all three titles and will release in both markets simultaneously.

Its first title is Baume’s non-fiction debut handiwork, described as a “contemplative short narrative” charting the daily process of making and writing. Tramp, which scooped rights from Lucy Luck at Coleridge & White, explained: “A short, elegant piece that encompasses images and is itself a significant artifact, handiwork will offer more of the beautiful prose and extraordinary versatility you’ve come to expect from Sara Baume.”

Baume said: “This little book is a love-child of my art and writing practices, or a by-product of novels past and coming. It’s about the connection between handicraft and bird migration, as well as simply the account of a year spent making hundreds of small, painted objects in an isolated house. It will be my third book with Tramp Press, and I’m thrilled that they continue to support my endeavours.”

Also out in the spring is the “stunning” prose debut from poet Ní Ghríofa, A Ghost in the Throat, which weaves together two stories. The manuscript came to Tramp through the open submission policy and she subsequently signed with Matthew Turner at RCW.

Its synopsis explains: “In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary poem that reaches across the centuries to another poet. In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy in her own life. On encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with finding out the rest of the story. A devastating and timeless tale about finding your voice by freeing another’s.”

Ghríofa said: “I first came to know Tramp Press as a reader, eagerly awaiting each new book they might publish, so it is a joy to be working with them to bring my debut book of prose to other readers. Writing A Ghost in the Throat has been a strange and joyous haunting, and I am so excited to share it.”

Finally, winter will see Tramp publish A Selection of Classic Irish Fantasy by Jack Fennell as part of its Recovered Voices series, aiming to examine an overlooked side of Irish literary history. Fennell was commissioned by the publisher following his previous collection A Brilliant Void.

He said: “Putting together a science fiction anthology for Tramp’s Recovered Voices series was one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. Seldom does an opportunity arise to work with publishers so renowned for their taste and discernment, who also have a grá for stories about things like astronauts, dinosaurs and hairy babies. I’m beyond excited to be working with Tramp Press again, and I can’t wait to help bring some lesser-known Irish tales of wonder and wizardry to light.”