A Bart’s Book Talk on Quickly, While They Still Have Horses with author Jan Carson in conversation with Mandy Jackson-Beverly on Thursday, September 5 from 6 - 7 pm

Winner of the EU Prize! A surreal and darkly comic collection of stories from “one of the most exciting and original Northern Irish writers of her generation” (The Sunday Times, London)

Humorous and horrifying, tender and absurd, the stories in Quickly, While They Still Have Horses offer a fresh, irreverent look at life in post-conflict Northern Ireland. From first loves to strained relationships, the thrills and terrors of growing up to the dangers and challenges of parenthood, Carson infuses all her stories with empathy, dark wit, and a surreal edge.

In “A Certain Degree of Ownership,” a distracted couple on a beach fail to notice their baby crawl perilously toward the sea. In “Grand So,” the ghost of a car’s previous owner haunts the backseat. In “Troubling the Water,” a rumor of miraculous healing creates chaos at a public swimming pool. Carson never fails to shock and delight as kids go missing in jungle gyms, a baby washes up on a riverbank in a biscuit tin, and a bloody hand appears (and reappears) in a refrigerator. Every so often, these stories travel into alternate versions of our world where pillars of fire are a new treatment for mental illness and animals deemed nonessential are going extinct by legislative orders.

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in East Belfast. 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.

Mandy Jackson-Beverly is the host and executive producer of The Bookshop Podcast, event manager for the Lunch With An Author Literary Series at El Encanto, Santa Barbara, and has taught publishing and creative writing workshops for the University of London, Cal Poly, Publishers & Writers (San Diego, Orange County), California Writers Club, Writers & Publishers Network, Ventura Writers Club, and served as a guest interviewer for BookFest, Los Angeles. Mandy writes creative non-fiction and fiction and avidly supports independent bookshops and authors worldwide. She is the author of The Creatives Series: A Secret Muse, The Devil and the Muse, The Immortal Muse, and The Legend of Astridr: Birth.

The conversation doesn’t need to end when our event does! Enjoy a free glass of wine at Sam's Place when you buy a book after our event. Stroll from our courtyard to theirs, located next to the tunnel between Ojai Avenue and the Arcade Plaza. At Sam's Place, their philosophy is simple: cook like it's for family (charcuterie, anyone?!) and pour like it's for friends. 

Praise for Jan Carson

"Original, hard-won, properly inspired . . . [Carson is] deeply talented. These sixteen stories, set in post-Troubles Northern Ireland, plumb questions of conflict and morality through mysterious bloody hands, a backseat ghost, and more." —Kevin Barry, New York Times Book Review

“An admirable collection of stories, saturated with acerbic wit and startling empathy.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“A collection of 16 darkly comic short stories that move fluidly between decades and genres. . . . Carson's blend of dark humor and unwavering compassion for her characters will appeal to fans of Louise Kennedy and Rebecca Miller.” —Booklist (starred review)

"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 The Queen of Dirt Island

“Oh, the imagination! Oh, the inventiveness! In every zany story. Apparently, there’s a branch on the language tree that belongs entirely to Jan Carson.” —Sidik Fofana, author of Stories From the Tenants Downstairs

"[Jan Carson] is most definitely a free-thinking, trailblazing writer of well-observed, quirkily humorous fiction. . . . This book is a wild but somehow, totally grounded read. Superb." —Sunday Independent

"Vivid, original, and moving. . . . Carson excels in offering an accumulation of detail, deftly painting portraits that convince even as they alarm. . . . Long after the reader has closed the book, these tales linger in the mind." —Irish Times