Luke Cassidy is a writer from Dundalk, Ireland. He has adapted his novel, Iron Annie, for the stage as the Iron Annie Literary Cabaret, a spectacle of spoken word and music based on the book, which will tour twenty theatres in Ireland with the support of the Irish Arts Council. A short story of his, A Good Turn, will be featured in the forthcoming New Island Books anthology of writing from the Irish border region, The New Frontier. Iron Annie is his first novel.
What an exquisite novel Iron Annie is. The narrative voice fair crackles: it's full of wonder, grit, insight, sadness and joy, and is quite beautiful. And Aoife is one of those fictional characters that arrives only once or twice in an age, sublimely rendered and completely unforgettable. -- Donal Ryan, author of The Spinning Heart and From a Low and Quiet Sea Wonderful, imaginative, highly original emotional rollercoaster of a story -- Peter James Iron Annie is a novel full of grit and pearls - its language crackles with life. Luke Cassidy is a writer with a keen eye and a finely-tuned ear -- Ronan Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul Utterly original ... I think this book is like a bolt from the blue for Irish writing -- Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy. It's apparent from the opening lines of Iron Annie that Luke Cassidy can write. His prose fizzes with energy and music, and the reader is immediately plunged into the anarchic underbelly of Ireland and the lives of Cassidy's vivid characters. -- Graeme Macrae Burnet, author of His Bloody Project It's wild and fierce and full of awful life. Also dead funny . . . This needs to be slapped on the arse and let out snorting into the world like a mustang horse -- Niall Griffiths, author of Grits, Sheepshagger and Stump Iron Annie marks the arrival of a fresh and compelling young voice in literary fiction . . . These complex, funny, tender, lewd and lovely characters will grab you by the throat from the first line and dare you to stop reading -- Emily Rapp Black, author of Poster Child, The Still Point of the Turning World, Cartography for Cripples and Sanctuary Iron Annie is a staggering debut novel. And what makes it so stylish and ferocious isn't the drugs, the brutal violence, or even the wild love and sex - it's the language. I've never read anything like the sentences in here. -- Rachel DeWoskin, author of Banshee, Big Girl Small, and Foreign Babes in Beijing