Tramp Press snaps up first book from 'powerful new voice' Armstrong

Tramp Press has acquired Ireland and UK rights to Maggie Armstrong’s Old Romantics. 

Co-publishers Lisa Coen and Sarah Davis-Goff acquired the rights from Marianne Gunn O’Connor at the Marianne Gunn O’Connor Literary, Film & TV Agency. The book will publish on 18th April 2024. 

The book is described as “a collection of alternative romances told from a netherworld of love and disenchantment”. The stories follow the interior biography of an indistinct Dublin woman, from early adulthood into motherhood and the trials of young family life right up to the pandemic.  

“Whether a catastrophic road trip, an ill-advised career move or a sinister encounter on the beach, these stories dig at the heart of what it is to be alone and alienated in your world” the publisher said. “The heroes of these escapades are thickly masked and often unreliable as they pursue each other. Love is sometimes obsessive and often delusional. Motivations are slippery, expectations are shattered, and self-knowledge is hard-won yet inevitable.” 

Armstrong said: “I am uncontainably delighted to be working with Tramp on my very first book. What I find strangest to believe is that all those mornings, afternoons, and sometimes nights I sat agonising over lines of text, none of it was in vain. Lisa and Sarah at Tramp have consistently published fearless and form-breaking work, from their contemporary writers to their recovered voices series. I feel honoured and at home among this stable of artists.” 

Coen added: “Old Romantics is a collection of witty and acutely observed stories from an astonishing new talent. Slippery, observant and flawed, Maggie Armstrong’s narrators navigate a world of awkward expectation and latent hostility. From bad dates that call to mind an Irish ‘Cat Person’ by Kristen Roupenian, to comically observed workplace absurdity, Maggie Armstrong is a powerful new voice in Irish fiction and we are honoured to get to work with her.” 

Armstrong’s work has appeared in the Dublin Review, the Stinging Fly, Banshee and the Belfield Literary Review.