Michael Magee

Michael Magee opens Crowed with a coffee-spill Rorschach crow, its bill dripping honey and mayhem. These poems travel across ethereal borders and find a man in honey who finds his way home from the pub after too many hours, who finds rain is no sorrow. And too, there is the mayhem of devastating fires, a man with a hose, where every road is a dead end, or the woman in "Bench Warrant" who is "rising on her own / after last night's collapse / the wind gone out of her." Crowed's shiny objects are life's joys and sorrows. They are a witch in the woods and the ginger cat dreaming of a perfect love. -Kevin Miller, author of Spring Meditation and Vanish Crowed should be read slowly and luxuriously for each poem is deeply layered and gorgeously told in stunning language. The subject matter is varied and intriguing, from encounters with birds to travels through Ireland and back through history. Each poem is a delight. In its entirety, the book is a wonder. -Maggie Kennedy, author of The Unraveling Script

Un retrato de la masculinidad moderna, marcada por la clase, el trauma y el silencio. Premio Rooney 2023 de Literatura irlandesa Nero Book Award a mejor debut literario 2023 «Una novela compleja y fascinante sobre la precariedad, la desesperanza y los ecos de la violencia . - David Mej a, El Mundo Anthony, el hermano de Sean, es un hombre duro. Cuando eran ni os, su madre intent mantenerlos alejados del conflicto, pero tratar con Anto siempre ha sido complicado. Se supon a que Sean deb a ser distinto. Se supon a que deb a marcharse para no regresar jam s. Pero, tras cuatro a os en Liverpool, Sean vuelve a Belfast y se encuentra con una ciudad sumida en la miseria y la frustraci n, y a sus amigos y a su hermano cada vez m s hundidos en el pozo sin fondo del alcohol y las drogas. Una noche, Sean agrede a un desconocido, y ese acto de violencia repentina desencadenar una serie de acontecimientos que lo forzar n a decidir qu tipo de hombre quiere ser. Gracias a su propia experiencia, Michael Magee despliega un retrato de la masculinidad moderna, marcada por la clase, el trauma y el silencio, pero tambi n por la valent a de amar y sobrevivir. Otra vez en casa es una extraordinaria obra de ficci n sobre c mo encontrar tu lugar en la ciudad que te ha visto nacer y sobre la lucha por labrarse un futuro en un entorno marcado por la violencia y la desesperanza. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION "Michael Magee's dead-on debut novel is universal." ―The New York Times Book Review While growing up in West Belfast, Sean does everything he's supposed to do. He works hard, he studies, and he―mostly―stays out of trouble. The thirty-year conflict is over, he's told, and his future is lit with promise. But when Sean returns home from university, he finds much of the same―the same friends doing the same gear in the same clubs; the same lost brothers and mad fathers; the same closed doors; the same silences. There are no jobs, Sean's degree isn't worth the paper it's written on, and no one will give him the time of day. One night, he assaults a stranger at a party, and everything begins to come undone. Michael Magee's luminous debut, Close to Home, begins with this sudden act of violence and expands into a startling portrait of working-class Ireland under the long shadow of the Troubles. It's a first novel drawn from life, written with the immediacy of thought. It's about what happens when men get desperate, about the cycles of loss and trauma and secrecy that keep them trapped, and about the struggle to get free.

"Michael Magee's dead-on debut novel is universal." --The New York Times Book Review While growing up in West Belfast, Sean does everything he's supposed to do. He works hard, he studies, and he--mostly--stays out of trouble. The thirty-year conflict is over, he's told, and his future is lit with promise. But when Sean returns home from university, he finds much of the same--the same friends doing the same gear in the same clubs; the same lost brothers and mad fathers; the same closed doors; the same silences. There are no jobs, Sean's degree isn't worth the paper it's written on, and no one will give him the time of day. One night, he assaults a stranger at a party, and everything begins to come undone. Michael Magee's luminous debut, Close to Home, begins with this sudden act of violence and expands into a startling portrait of working-class Ireland under the long shadow of the Troubles. It's a first novel drawn from life, written with the immediacy of thought. It's about what happens when men get desperate, about the cycles of loss and trauma and secrecy that keep them trapped, and about the struggle to get free.

WINNER OF THE ROONEY PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2023WINNER OF THE NERO BOOK AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION 2023WINNER OF THE JOHN MCGAHERN PRIZE 2024WATERSTONES IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023Sean is back. Back in Belfast and back into old habits. Back on the mad all-nighters, the borrowed tenners and missing rent, the casual jobs that always fall through. Back in these scarred streets, where the promised prosperity of peacetime has never arrived. Back among his brothers, his ma, and all the things they never talk about. Until one night Sean finds himself at a party – dog-tired, surrounded by jeering strangers, his back against the wall – and he makes a big mistake.'Staggeringly humane, unfaltering, taut and tender... [It] feels like that rarest of things: a genuinely necessary book' Guardian'Every detail rings true, every character is fleshy and real and heartbreaking... Michael Magee has a remarkable talent' Sunday TimesSHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE EWART-BIGGS PRIZE 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS’ CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2024SHORTLISTED FOR THE DIVERSE BOOK AWARDS 2024LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2024ONE OF SARAH JESSICA PARKER’S BEST BOOKS OF 2023BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ACCORDING TO THE TIMES AND IRISH TIMES

While growing up in West Belfast, Sean does every-thing he's supposed to do. He works hard, he studies, and he - mostly - stays out of trouble. The thirty-year conflict is over, he's told, and his future is lit with promise. But when Sean returns home from university, he finds much of the same-the same friends doing the same gear in the same clubs; the same lost broth-ers and mad fathers; the same closed doors; the same silences. There are no jobs, Sean's degree isn't worth the paper it's written on, and no one will give him the time of day. One night, he assaults a stranger at a party, and everything begins to come undone. Close to Home begins with this sudden act of violence and expands into a startling portrait of working-class Ireland under the long shadow of the Troubles. It's a first novel drawn from life, written with the immediacy of thought. It's about what happens when men get desperate, about the cycles of loss and trauma and secrecy that keep them trapped, and about the struggle to get free.

WINNER OF THE ROONEY PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2023WINNER OF THE NERO BOOK AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION 2023WATERSTONES IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023Sean is back. Back in Belfast and back into old habits. Back on the mad all-nighters, the borrowed tenners and missing rent, the casual jobs that always fall through. Back in these scarred streets, where the promised prosperity of peacetime has never arrived. Back among his brothers, his ma, and all the things they never talk about. Until one night Sean finds himself at a party – dog-tired, surrounded by jeering strangers, his back against the wall – and he makes a big mistake.'Staggeringly humane, unfaltering, taut and tender... [It] feels like that rarest of things: a genuinely necessary book' Guardian'Every detail rings true, every character is fleshy and real and heartbreaking... Michael Magee has a remarkable talent' Sunday TimesSHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE EWART-BIGGS PRIZE 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS’ CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2024SHORTLISTED FOR THE JOHN MCGAHERN PRIZE 2024LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2024LONGLISTED FOR THE DIVERSE BOOK AWARDS 2024ONE OF SARAH JESSICA PARKER’S BEST BOOKS OF 2023BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ACCORDING TO THE TIMES AND IRISH TIMES

The mood and scope of the whole are sounded in Part I, The New Odysseus, a series of twenty linked poems, where a somewhat weary new Odysseus invokes his legendary adventures and various gods as he wanders both in the Tacoma present and yet in other lands and times, with an eye on our absurd world of the coffee house, sex change, the mall, pogo sticks, an anomalous game of cricket, poverty, yearning, old age, mortality, a quiet, bleak fading. It is a phantasmagorical trip, told with a kind of rueful even solemn whimsy which is his own. The following two sections reflect Magee's personal odyssey. They give us back the varied worlds he has inhabited, their landscapes and meanings, through the vision of artists and poets whose personae Magee explores and at times adopts. It is a strange world, steeped in art, populated by the active ghosts of Proust, Whitman, Roethke, Chagall, O'Keeffe, Yeats, Cather and others, as well as by spirits like Rapunzel. But then a homeless man speaks as he wakes in his cold blankets near Seattle docks. Or we pause in front of a Dali painting to consider time itself. It is quite a trip.The book is dedicated to Jean Musser, the poet's late wife and fellow poet. She also appears movingly in a few of the poems. Her presence is felt throughout. --Ben Drake

Emancipating Pragmatism is a radical rereading of Emerson that posits African-American culture, literature, and jazz as the very continuation and embodiment of pragmatic thought and democratic tradition. It traces Emerson's philosophical legacy through the 19th and 20th centuries to discover how Emersonian thought continues to inform issues of race, aesthetics, and poetic discourse. Emerson's pragmatism derives from his abolitionism, Michael Magee argues, and any pragmatic thought that aspires toward democracy cannot ignore and must reckon with its racial roots. Magee looks at the ties between pragmatism and African-American culture as they manifest themselves in key texts and movements, such as William Carlos Williams's poetry; Ralph Ellison's discourse in Invisible Man and Juneteenth and his essays on jazz; the poetic works of Robert Creeley, Amiri Baraka, and Frank O'Hara; as well as the ""new jazz"" being forged at clubs like The Five Spot in New York. Ultimately, Magee calls into question traditional maps of pragmatist lineage and ties pragmatism to the avant-garde American tradition.