We are really excited to welcome Jan Carson to Juno to discuss her latest novel, ‘Few and Far Between’ in which she imagines an alternative version of Northern
Ireland’s recent past.
A prime minister with a mad plan to create a new county. An archipelago of haunted islands. A community seeking refuge from the Troubles. The perfect place to escape to - or so it appears. It’s summer 2017 and the last few residents of the Lough Neagh Archipelago are facing imminent eviction.
The flood planned to combat a devastating algae outbreak will submerge their homes, forcing them back to the Mainland for the first time in fifty years. How will they cope with modern life? Will the Ark give up its secrets before it sinks? Can they leave the past behind?
'Jan Carson is a born storyteller: her work is so imaginative, whimsical, mischievous and brave, but tender and curious too’ Lisa McInerney
‘Jan Carson’s most ambitious novel yet – bold in its counter-factual conception, confident in its scope, yet intimate in the knowledge of its characters, all of whom are accorded dignity and a quiet humanity. It’s also very, very funny’ Lucy Caldwell
‘No writer captures the absurdity and beauty of life quite like [Jan Carson] does, and with this novel she hascreated something especially prescient’
Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither
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.