Local author Tracy Fahey has just been nominated for the award for Best Novella in the British Fantasy Awards for her 2023 book, They Shut Me Up. It is her third time to be shortlisted for these prestigious awards. Fresh on the heels of being a finalist in the London Short Story Prize earlier this year, Fahey, who lives in Sixmilebridge, is delighted that her Clare-set novella is one of five shortlisted for the global awards, which take place in October.
“They Shut Me Up is a novella based on a feminist reclamation of the turbulent and colourful life of Máire Rua O’Brien of Lemenagh Castle,” says Fahey.
“I’ve been fascinated by her since I moved to Clare in 2018, a woman who in her own time was demonised as a witch, a torturer, a murderer, and even a sort of female Bluebeard.”
This novella has attracted praise for its mingling of bio-fiction, folklore and feminism. Reviewer Georgina Bruce in Interzone magazine described it as ‘a gargantuan ice-breaking ship of a book. Like Angela Carter before her, Tracy Fahey has done something fundamentally new and necessary with old and misunderstood stories.’ Fahey was commissioned to write this novella by PS Publishing and knew immediately what she wanted to write about.
“On one level, it’s about Maire Rua as a historically complex character, on another it’s about a contemporary woman experiencing loss of agency and identity accompanying the menopause. But it’s also about how this rite of passage can be powerful and joyous; a move towards daring to claim a space and be heard,” she said.
“Ultimately, They Shut Me Up is a novella about women’s voices – those who historically lost them, and those who are still finding them.’
Editor Maire O’Regan was delighted with the resulting novella.
“They Shut Me Up is glorious; a story that reworks how women are seen, restoring the feminine voice to its full power,” she said.
Fahey has been attracted to folklore for a long time but her current obsession with Irish female figures from folklore started in 2021 with a writing residency in Cill Rialaig in Kerry.
“It was life-changing,’ she says.
“Living on remote Bolus Head that autumn I reconnected with folklore through the collected tales of Sean O’Conaill, the great Kerry storyteller. I was drawn to the strong female archetypes of the Cailleach, or Hag, and how her legacy endures through wise women, healing women, midwives, keeners—and, yes, into powerful historical women like Máire Rua.”
Fahey, who is a lecturer at Limerick School of Art and Design, TUS, researched her novella in Clare, but wrote it in Finland where she lived for several months in 2023 as part of a Saari Fellowship granted by the Kone Foundation.
“I’m grateful to TUS who granted me a career break to write, and to Clare Arts Office and Limerick Arts Office for their support in terms of grants and bursaries,” she says.
“I’m lucky to live here where creativity is encouraged.’ Fahey has recently worked as contributor to Goth: A History (Quercus 2023) written by Lol Tolhurst from The Cure and is one of five contemporary writers featured in Tales of the Otherworld (Gill Books 2023) a selection of Irish ghost stories curated by former newsreader Anne Doyle. She has just completed her fourth short story collection.
“This book explores ideas of sovereignty and power relating to the Cailleach,” she says. ‘These stories trace the lingering influence of the Hag across millennia and celebrate the power, visibility and importance of older women in contemporary culture.”
The winners of the British Fantasy Awards will be announced at the annual Awards Ceremony in Chester, UK on October 13.
Tracy Fahey has been shortlisted for Best Novella in 2024, and twice for Best Collection by the British Fantasy Awards , for the London Independent Short Story Prize and for the Leicester Short Story Prize. Her work deals principally with reimagined folklore and female Gothic. Fahey’s short fiction has appeared in more than 40 Irish, UK, US and Australian anthologies and has been reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement.
Her writing is supported by residencies in Ireland, Greece and Finland and funded by Grants Under The Arts and an Individual Arts Bursary. She was awarded Saari Fellow status for 2023 by the Kone Foundation for her writing. Fahey holds a PhD in the Gothic, and lectures in Critical and Contextual Studies at Limerick School of Art and Design, TUS.
Andrew Hamilton is a journalist, investigative reporter and blogger who has been working in the media in Ireland for the past 20 years. His areas of special interest include the environment, mental health and politics.