Children's Children

Read the debut short story collection from the multi-award-winning author of The Raptures, now updated with a new bonus story.

'Jan Carson is a born storyteller' Lisa McInerney

A floating six-year-old tethered to the backyard fence; two siblings watching their parents argue inside a greenhouse; a human statue who’s lost the ability to move; a support group for the haunted: the characters in Children’s Children are all falling apart in their own peculiar ways.

Told in Jan Carson’s distinctive voice, her debut short story collection contains absurdist, darkly humorous and heartbreaking stories which explore the concept of legacy, and the impact of one generation upon the next.

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PRAISE FOR JAN CARSON:

'These stories are pure magic, funny, sharp, heartbreaking, the short form at its absolute best. Jan Carson is a unique and very special writer, one of the greatest of the modern fabulists' DONAL RYAN, author of Heart, Be at Peace

'Story after story glints with the strange, hard magic of the North . . . I adored them.' LUCY CALDWELL, author of These Days

'Jan Carson's stories are by turns hilarious, heartbreaking, heartwarming - but always surprising' ERIC NGUYEN, author of Things We Lost to the Water

'Jan Carson is one of the most original voices I’ve read in years . . . I am truly in awe of this collection' TANIA JAMES, author of The Tusk That Did the Damage

'What an enormous pleasure it is to read Jan Carson. Each short story is masterful, brilliantly inventive and moving. Every page reveals the mark of an extraordinary original and gifted writer' KARL GEARY, author of Montpelier Parade

About Jan Carson

Jan Carson is a writer based in Belfast. She has published three novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019. Jan’s latest novel, The Raptures was published by Doubleday in early 2022 and was subsequently shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her short story collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses was published by Doubleday (UK) in April 2024 and Scribner (US) in July 2024. Her writing has been aired on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and RTE.

She is the Seamus Heaney Centre Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast 2025 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her first stage play, an adaptation of the children’s classic, The Velveteen Rabbit will be produced by Replay Theatre Company at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast in March 2025. Her next novel, Few and Far Between is forthcoming in early 2026.
Details
  • Imprint: Transworld Digital
  • ISBN: 9781529942699
  • Length: 240 pages
  • Price: £5.99
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