Oh, the Banshees… What’s not to love? Emerging writers? Check. Strange and bizarre while poignant and thoughtful? Check. With story-telling at its heart that opens conversation, immerses the reader, and challenges convention? Check, check, check! Without further ado, we’d like to introduce our #IndieSweethearts of the month: Banshee Press!

Indie Sweetheart is a spotlight on some of the independent presses we work with at Turnaround.

Who are Banshee Press?

Starting in 2014 as a publisher of a literary journal specialising in literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, and poetry, the Banshees are a press that thrive in the original and the unorthodox. Based in Ireland, the indie press was founded by three writers and millennials: Laura Cassidy, Eimear Ryan and Claire Hennessy. In 2019, they established themselves as Banshee Press and began publishing a select list of books, from short story collections to poetry to memoir.

Celebrating daring literature and fresh new takes, Banshee Press was included in The Bookseller’s Rising Star list of 2021, an annual list of the book industry’s up-and-comers. They are the current regional finalists for the British Book Awards Small Press Award, waving the flag for Ireland. Receiving rave reviews in the Irish Times, Vogue, and Stylist, they are heralded for providing stepping stones for emerging writers, with women at the forefront.

Banshee’s list demonstrates tender loving care — you can almost feel each drop of detail within the pages. From an entire poetry collection inspired by Harry Styles and fandom to short stories based on women birthing pets, this is a publishing house that is unafraid to be different. They might be young, but they know what they’re doing, and we can’t wait to see what comes next from the Banshees!

Have a gander at some of their books, both upcoming and available now:

Let the Dead by Dylan Brennan

Banshee Press, 9781838312695, PB, £8.99, 8/6/2023

A new collection from the award-winning poet, Dylan Brennan.

Deeply attuned to those things that make and unmake us, Dylan Brennan’s Let The Dead concerns itself with life’s alchemical processes. A couple breathe life into a doomed poppet, a photographer immortalises a corpse, Joyce and Breton rub shoulders on the streets of the poet’s adopted Mexico, where life is a tapestry of “delicate anthers” and “disembodied tongues.” These dark meditations are set against poems which consider love, miscarriage, childbirth and the daily miracle of family life. Beautiful and disturbing by turns, these reflections on Ireland and Mexico’s shared colonial past invoke topographies both real and imagined, where “things in the ground have a tendency to grow.” Let the Dead reminds us of the power of art to shape our perception of history, and of the artist’s responsibility in a time of violence.

In Her Jaws by Rosamund Taylor

Banshee Press, 9781838312640, PB, £8.99, 19/5/2022

A daring poetry collection that reimagines history, astronomy, sorcery, wild landscapes and queer love through the lens of transformation and survival.

In her debut collection, Rosamund Taylor dares us across thresholds and invites us to glimpse the world as we’ve never seen it before. She boldly charts a journey of survival and transformation with poems on history reimagined, astronomy, sorcery, wild landscapes, talismanic creatures, and queer love. In Her Jaws is a landmark debut that extends and deepens the Irish tradition of writing the female perspective, while also breaking new ground. Taylor explores gender, sexuality, identity, neurodiversity, illness, history, and so much more — all with a voice that is playful, lyrical, and skilful.

Pacemaker by David Toms

Banshee Press, 9781838312657, HB, £12.99, 15/9/2022

A powerful and resonant memoir about living with a rare heart condition, from poet David Toms.

Every time I write about my heart, I write about walking. Every time I write about walking, I write about my heart. What is it like to be born with a congenital heart defect? What does it mean to live knowing your heart will one day fail you? How do you walk without moving a muscle? In Pacemaker, poet David Toms deftly blends creative nonfiction, poetry and diary in an account of resisting, confronting, and living with a rare heart condition. His experience, including his hospitalisation during the Covid-19 pandemic, speaks to all of us in its exploration of what it means to live in a fragile yet resilient body, to walk multiple challenging paths, and to always a find a way to keep moving.