Jen Calleja & Caitríona Lally

Fair The Life-Art of Translation by Jen Calleja is loosely set in an imagined book fair/art fair/fun fair, in which every stall or ride imitates a real-world scenario or dilemma which must be observed and negotiated, the book moves between personal memories and larger questions about the role of the literary translator in publishing, about fairness and hard work, the ways we define success, and what it means – and whether it is possible – to make a living as an artist. Fair is also interested in questions of upbringing, background, support, how different people function in the workplace, and the ways in which people are excluded or made invisible in different cultural and creative industries. It connects literary translation to its siblings in other creative arts to show how creative and subjective a practice it is while upholding the ethics and politics at play when we translate someone else’s work. Blurring the lines between memoir, autofiction, satire and polemic, Fair is a singularly inventive and illuminating book by one of the UK’s most original and admired writers and translators. It was longlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize for Experimentation in Text  

Home Economics is Caitríona Lally’s memoir of her time working in the housekeeping department at Trinity College Dublin while she awaits the publication of her first two novels in 2015 and 2021. Having cleaned part-time as a student, this return marks the beginning of a negotiation between the practical and creative demands of a writer’s life – an equation that is further complicated when she becomes pregnant. At Trinity, Caitríona and her colleagues shout to one another through empty, ancient libraries, step around sleeping students and laugh at the cleaner-shaped blind spots in the thinking of feminist conference attendees. Lally finds humour in the gap between how the world views this famous university and how she experiences it during her workday while offering a powerful reflection on the work she chooses to do, and why; how we might perceive ourselves, and others; and whether our own personal home economics actually add up. In her third book and first memoir, Caitríona writes in that space between the way the world sees the life of a writer and the reality of her own juggle with all the different, complex parts of her: writer, mother and partner, cleaner and runner, employee and colleague… success and failure.