10th July 2026


Books


Author Profile


Louise Kennedy


The much-anticipated follow-up to Trespasses, Kennedy’s multi-award-winning debut, is surely a Booker contender. Alice O’Keeffe reports


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Imprint Bloomsbury Circus Publication 24th September 2026 Formats HB (9781526664327, £20); EB (9781526664303, £14) Rights sold 12 territories, including the US (Riverhead) Editor Alexis Kirschbaum Agent Eleanor Birne, RCW


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or a writer who once described herself as feeling like “a chef with notions”, Louise Kennedy has done pretty well. In 2014, after nearly 30 years working as a chef, she


reluctantly joined a writing group as a favour to a friend. Five short years later, Bloomsbury announced it had acquired a short story collection, The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac, and a novel in a nine-way bidding war, describing Kennedy as “a rare talent”. The novel was Trespasses, about star-crossed lovers across the divide of the Troubles in 1975, which went on to win The British Book Awards Debut Fiction Book of the Year, the An Post Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year and the McKitterick Prize. It was short- listed for both the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and in 2025 it was adapted for Channel 4 with a starry cast. Stations is, then, the Sligo-based author’s much-anticipated second novel, opening in small-town Ireland in 1982, where stroppy


Books Author Profile


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