Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in East Belfast.
Her debut novel Malcolm Orange Disappears and short story collection, Children’s Children, were published by Liberties Press, Dublin. A micro-fiction collection, Postcard Stories was published by the Emma Press in 2017. Jan’s novel The Fire Starters was published by Doubleday in April 2019 and subsequently won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019 and the Kitschies Prize for Speculative Fiction. The Raptures was shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year, the Dalkey Book Prize and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Prize in 2022. Jan has been shortlisted for the Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize, the BBC National Short Story Prize and An Post Irish Short Story of the Year Award,” and in 2016 won the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize. Her work has been translated into more than 15 languages.
'One of the most exciting and original Northern Irish writers of her generation.’
- SUNDAY TIMES
Her work has appeared in journals such as Banshee, The Tangerine, Winter Papers and Harper’s Bazaar and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. In 2018 Jan was the Irish Writers Centre’s inaugural Roaming Writer in Residence on the trains of Ireland. She was the 2019 recipient of the Jack Harte Bursary and has completed residencies in Cove Park, Scotland and the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. Jan has curated the CS Lewis Festival, the Hillsborough Festival of Literature and Ideas and the inaugural Belfast Lit Crawl. She specialises in arts engagement with older and people living with Dementia and was part of an AHRC-funded research project at Queen’s University Belfast exploring the representation of Dementia in literature. She has facilitated creative writing workshops for the University of Ulster, Irish Writers Centre, Dublin, John Hewitt Summer School, West Cork Literary Festival and many other universities, festivals and organisations.
Books
**WINNER of the EU Prize for Literature**
'Gripping, affecting, surprising. I inhaled it.' LISA MCINERNEY
'Captivating, intelligent and courageous.' IRISH TIMES
'Spectacular. At once grittily real, wildly magical and insanely alluring - a siren-song of a novel.’
DONAL RYAN
'Jan Carson seems to have invented a new Belfast in this gripping, surprising, exhilarating novel.’
RODDY DOYLE
'A brilliant, wry novel, fizzing with energy.' BARNEY NORRIS
‘Her stories move effortlessly from reality to dystopia to surreal vignettes in a style that recalls the up-and-coming American authors Laura van den Berg and Diane Cook.’
SARAH GILMARTIN, IRISH TIMES
’Jan Carson proves herself adept at making the familiar marvellously uncanny … Carson's writing - bracingly fresh, darkly funny, unwaveringly compassionate - represents such a direction in Northern Irish fiction.’
TARA MCEVOY, IRISH NEWS
Each day of 2015 Jan Carson wrote a short story on the back of a postcard and mailed it to a friend. Each of these tiny stories was inspired by an event, an overheard conversation, a piece of art or just a fleeting glance of something worth thinking about further.
Collected in one volume, Carson's postcards present a panoramic view of contemporary Belfast -- its coffee shops, streets and museums and airports -- and offer it to the wider world. Even as they seem to spring from a writer's solitary perspective, taken together, these observations and their distribution speak of human connectedness. Like a pleasant surprise in the mail, this collection reminds us how many friendships are born and strengthened in a story shared.
'A born storyteller, [Carson’s] narratives are uncontainable, fizzing up out of her pages like soda and vinegar in a bottle.'
THE GUARDIAN
'At its best, Malcolm Orange Disappears reminds the reader of Kurt Vonnegut and other masters of the absurd Carson can be very, very funny. All of Carson's touches of magic realism are perfectly judged. This fresh, humane and charming debut novel bursts with ideas and verve.'
THE SUNDAY BUSINESS POST
'A highly original book; very quirky.'
IRISH EXAMINER
After the publication of Postcard Stories, Jan found it impossible to stop writing Postcard Stories. Her second volume of Postcard Stories was published by the Emma Press in early August 2020 and launched online as part of the Eastside Arts Festival. The stories in this slim collection are once again beautifully illustrated by artist, Benjamin Phillips and represent the best of some five hundred Postcard Stories Jan’s written in the last few years.
Jan’s still writing Postcard Stories. Last year the Belfast Trust compiled a collection of micro-stories written during her residency in the Royal Hospital. During Lockdown she kept herself busy mailing daily postcard stories to isolated individuals with bespoke illustrations created by a host of amazing child artists. The stories in her most recent collection pre-date Covid-19. They reflect the world as it used to be. Jan’s writing career has taken her all over the world, with her most recent novel, The Fire Starters currently translated into a dozen languages. As she travelled, she sent stories home; each one is a tiny snapshot of an adventure. These stories are funny, poignant and sometimes heart breaking. They’re perfect for readers with short attention spans and anyone stuck at home, daydreaming of places far away.
“The season’s just begun at Seacliff Caravan Park, but none of the residents are having a good time. Frankie’s obsessed with remembering his daughter’s death. Vidas, homeless and far from Lithuania, seeks sanctuary in an abandoned caravan. Anna struggles to shake off the ghost of her overbearing mother. Kathleen struggles to accept her daughter for who she is. Malcolm, a failed illusionist , makes one final attempt to reinvent himself. Agatha Christie- obsessed Alma faces her toughest case yet as she tries to help them all find what they’ve lost.”
This collection of ten linked short stories set in a fictional caravan park was published in April 2021. It was originally commissioned as a BBC Radio 4 series produced by Michael Shannon and ran over ten consecutive Sunday nights from January to March 2021.
ORIGINAL and COMPELLING...CHEF'S KISS!' MARIAN KEYES
'I gobbled up The Raptures . . . packed with wit and heart, and always utterly absorbing.' LISA MCINERNEY
When several children from the same village start succumbing to a mysterious illness, the quest to discover the cause has devastating and extraordinary consequences.
It is late June in Ballylack. Hannah Adger anticipates eight long weeks' reprieve from school, but when her classmate Ross succumbs to a violent and mysterious illness, it marks the beginning of a summer like no other.
As others fall ill, questions about what - or who - is responsible pitch the village into conflict and fearful disarray. Hannah is haunted by guilt as she remains healthy while her friends are struck down. Isolated and afraid, she prays for help.
Elsewhere in the village, tempers simmer, panic escalates and long-buried secrets threaten to emerge.
Bursting with Carson's trademark wit, profound empathy and soaring imagination, The Raptures explores how tragedy can unite a small community - and tear it apart. At its heart is the extraordinary resilience of one young girl. As the world crumbles around her, she must find the courage to be different in a place where conforming feels like the only option available.
Darkly funny, highly inventive and deeply moving, The Raptures is an unmissable novel of 2022
'Utterly compulsive and gripping . . . Jan Carson is a true original. An absolute must read. Outstanding.' ELAINE FEENEY
'Heart-rending, hilarious . . . it's a belter' LOUISE KENNEDY
'Blistering...glorious...written from the guts and from the heart.' LUCY CALDWELL
'One of the most exciting and original Northern Irish writers of her generation' SUNDAY TIMES
Darkly funny, highly inventive and deeply moving, The Raptures is an unmissable novel of 2022
"A Little Unsteadily Into Light" - New Dementia Inspired Short Fiction
Edited by Jan Carson
and Dr Jane Lugea
Published by New Island Press 2022
Newly commissioned short stories that explore and represent the lives of those living with dementia. While the vast majority of dementia narratives feature very specific types of the disease and a narrowly defined type of character, A Little Unsteadily into Light embraces and interrogates the depths and breadth of the dementia experience across ethnicity, age, class and gender, sex and consent. These new stories by some of the best writers from Ireland and the UK will provoke conversations and provide an honest and diverse insight into this important topic which impacts so many people.
Contributors:
Suad Aldarra, Caleb Azumeh Nelson, Jan Carson, Elaine Feeney, Oona Frawley, Sinéad Gleeson, Anna Jean Hughes, Caleb Klaces, Naomi Kruger, Henrietta McKervey, Paul McVeigh, Mary Morrissey, Nuala O'Connor and Chris Wright
Find out more about the AHRC- funded research project based at Queen's University Belfast, from which this anthology has emerged:
‘Jan Carson is a born storyteller: her work is so imaginative, whimsical, mischievous and brave, but tender and curious too — you never know where she's going to take you next, so reading her is always an adventure. Exactly how it should be.’ LISA MCINERNEY, author of THE GLORIOUS HERESIES
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In sixteen sparkling stories, Jan Carson introduces us to worlds and characters that feel real enough to touch. All of life is here: the thrill of growing up, the grief when youth is over; first love, mature love, parenthood and loss - all shot through with profound compassion, warm wit, and boundless imagination.
In 'A Certain Degree of Ownership', a distracted couple on a beach fail to notice their baby crawl perilously towards the sea. In 'Troubling the Water', a rumour spreads at a public swimming pool and chaos ensues. In 'Fair Play' a dishevelled father loses his two sons in an adventure park.
Every so often, an irresistible suggestion of the other world will surprise and delight, reaffirming Carson as a thrillingly original and audacious talent, and making Quickly, While They Still Have Horses the perfect introduction for readers new to her work.
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