Since its full-scale launch in 2003, Irish Pages: A Journal of Contemporary Writing has established itself as the island’s premier literary journal, combining a large general readership with outstanding writing from Ireland and overseas. With a print-run now standing at 3,000 per issue, the journal is also, increasingly, read outside Ireland and Britain. Widely considered the Irish equivalent of Granta in England, or The Paris Review in the United States, it offers an unrivalled window on the literary and cultural life of these islands – and further afield.
Although Irish Pages as a journal published four occasional books between 2003 and 2013, late 2018 saw the formal launch of our press in the sense of an annual programme of major book-publishing, under its new bilingual imprint, The Irish Pages Press/Cló An Mhíl Bhuí. In the view of the Editors, this was an auspicious moment for the development of a new high-profile literary press firmly rooted in Belfast and Ireland.
With the recent closure or contraction of several longstanding Northern Irish presses, Irish Pages Ltd (the non-profit publisher of Irish Pages and The Irish Pages Press) is uniquely qualified for this important cultural endeavour after nearly two decades of publishing Ireland’s largest and most international journal. It possessed the literary experience, distribution networks and financial health sufficient to launch a book publishing programme of the highest quality, comparable to any in these islands. Moreover, the superaddition of Southern Arts Council funding beginning 15 years ago to our equally indispensable annual grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland has unquestionably allowed the organization to become the single all-Ireland literary journal and press, with permanent Editors now also based in Scotland and England.
Currently, The Irish Pages Press is limited to poetry, essays, memoir and other forms of non-fiction (including the graphic novel form), in English, Irish and Scots.
The Irish Pages Press will always be characterized two essential and necessary components, flowing from the outstanding standards of the journal in an age of media noise and publishing hyperbole: literary content of exceptional quality, and production values (always hardback) equal to any in these islands. Apart from issues of finance, the sole criteria for publication by the press are the distinction of the writing and the integrity and independence of the individual voice.
Due to the challenges of the Pandemic’s first year, The Irish Pages Press opted for a publishing hiatus, from which it has emerged financially stronger due to further generous support from the two Arts Councils in Ireland, as well as the British Exchequer, since May 2020.
As a result, The Irish Pages Press brought out ten titles between 2021-2022 with another eight scheduled for 2023.
