The 13th Cone

By Maighread Medbh

A fantasy novel that might appeal to both teenagers and adults.
Eleven-year-old Dinn is a ‘stranger’—untouchable, deficient. She lives apart from her family in a hut because, unlike them, she changes and grows. Normal Petrians are only aware of one day, or ‘waking’. They never change, and despise even the hint of anything new. But underneath the apparent social uniformity there’s subversion and intrigue. Unknown to her, Dinn is being watched, and her life changes when she discovers the depth of Petrian deception. The question then is whether she can regain what she has lost.
The title is from a book of speculative spirituality by William Butler Yeats, and the story is basically about the process of coming into being. There are echoes of autism, political repression and incest, as well as shamanism and Native American practices, all woven together in a phantasmagorical whirl of sensation and the paranormal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maighread Medbh
• Release date: Apr 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311538321

Maighread Medbh

Maighread Medbh was born in Co. Limerick, Ireland, and now lives in Swords, Co. Dublin. Widely known for her experimental approach to text and powerful performance style, she has been described as ‘a unique presence in the Irish literary scene’. Following her debut poetry collection, The Making of a Pagan (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1990), the conviction that poetry emerges from one’s body led her to experiment with musical rhythms and moved her towards dramatic poetry. In the nineties, much of her work addressed political and social matters, and was primarily published in dramatic form. During this time, she was also writing novels and other works.Maighread now has seven published collections and a non-fiction work, Savage Solitude, which is a scholarly, dramatised study of the lone state, published by Dedalus Press in April 2013. Her most recent book, Parvit of Agelast, a verse fantasy, was shortlisted for the Pigott Poetry Prize in 2017. She's currently pursuing a creative PhD in DCU.

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