Danny Denton

Danny Denton is a writer from Passage West, in Cork, and lectures on writing at UCC. His first novel, The Earlie King & The Kid In Yellow, was published by Granta Books in 2018, and was subsequently shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and the Collyer-Bristow Novel of the Year award. His second novel, All Along The Echo, was published by Atlantic Books in 2022, to great critical acclaim. A Daily Telegraph ‘Book of the Year’, it was hailed by The Guardian as a cyclone of a novel’. The Irish Times referred to it as ‘highly original… something special… wonderful’, while The Irish Independent review proclaimed: ‘A really fine novel…cinematically vivid… strikingly ambitious… lovely, lyrical… original, poetic and beguiling.’ His forthcoming novel, Betweenness, will be published at the end of 2026.

Among other publications (approx. 35 in total), his shorter work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Southword, Granta, Winter Papers, The Dublin Review, Tate Etc, The Observer, The Guardian, The Irish Times, Architecture Ireland & The Big Issue. A fuller list of publications can be found below.

He is a former editor (and currently contributing editor) of The Stinging Fly magazine. In 2023 (shortly after the end of Denton’s editorial stewardship, 2018-2022), The New York Times featured an article on the magazine, hailing it as ‘something of a revelation in Irish literature.’

Denton is also a collaborator and curator. He curates the literature strand of the Cork Midsummer Festival, in which new literary works are written and performed in new lights, through trans-artform collaboration. He has also been an artist-in-residence, most recently at Sounds From A Safe Harbour (2025).

RESEARCH OUTPUT, FULL LIST.

 NOVELS

Betweenness. Atlantic Books (commissioned, forthcoming late 2026).

All Along the Echo. Atlantic Books, 2022.

The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow. Granta Books, 2018. (also translated into French and published by Chastel-Buchet, 2019).

SHORT PROSE (documenting only the last ten years)

"the things." Collaborative commissioned response to Lee Welch’s In Praise of Idleness, May 2024.

"Love Letter in the Midsummer." Cork Stories, Doire Press, 2024, pp 23-28.

"it’s windy here." The Writer’s Torch, The Stinging Fly Press, 2023, pp 6-10.

"45 Views of a Dual Carriageway." Belfield Literary Review 2, 2022, pp 45-56.

“Witnessing our son…” Image Magazine, Spring 2022.

“Evening at the Friary”. Cork Words 2, Cork City Libraries, 2021, pp 83-92.

"The Central Field." In Context 4 – In Our Time, 2021, pp 26-27.

"Sea of Typhoons." The Cormorant, 2020, p 5.

"Motorbike Accident, Galway West." Galway Stories, Doire Press, 2019, pp 131-138.

"Idea For A Film." Port Magazine, Issue 25, Aut-Winter 2019-20, pp 188-191.

“[Notations for] Mass for Voice Writerly Voices.” The Danger and the Glory. ed. Hedwig Schwall. Arlen House,      2019, pp 88-96. 

"In Rain." Banshee, Autumn/Winter 2019, pp 5-23.

"Everslipping Routine." The Dublin Review, Issue 76, Autumn 2019, pp 91-98.

"Song of Aero." Tate, Etc, Issue 43, Spring 2018, pp 108-109.

"Faltering Song." Granta, (the online edition), 10^th January 2018. https://granta.com/faltering-song/

"Middatun Town." Southword, Issue 35, 2018, pp 58-63.

“Notes on Craft”. Granta (the online edition), 4^th April 2018. https://granta.com/danny-denton-notes-craft/

"Patrols." The London Magazine, February 20^th 2018.

"Three Spins." Winter Papers, Curlew Editions, 2018, pp 111-116.

"The Body Stump." Funhouse, 2017, pp 38-45.

"Terror, Wonder." The Stinging Fly, Issue 31, Vol.2 , Summer 2015, pp 123-145.

He has also written literary criticism & feature journalism for publications including:

• The Irish Times
• The Observer
• The Guardian
• Metro
• Big Issue
• Image
• The Irish Examiner
• Architecture Ireland
• BBC Radio 4 (various)
• RTE Radio 1 (Arena)
• The 42.com
• The Cardiff Review
• Metro (London)
• Sunday Independent

I am primarily interested in innovative, modernist or postmodernist fiction, but keep an interest in all fictional forms, both short and long.

I am also interested in:

• researching precarity amongst arts practitioners
• the writing life
• creative writing as research
• zine-making, zine culture, and zine-making as a teaching tool
• ecological literature
• hybrid forms

Current interests in my own fictional projects include: voice; clowning; hauntology; dystopia; senses of place; non-place; the philosophies of John Moriarty, Marc Augé & Tetsuro Watsuji; Studio Ghibli; Final Fantasy VII (among other games!); and much much more.

Some of my favourite writers (who I'll never stop 'researching') include: Anne Carson, Alisdair Gray, Han Kang, David Foster Wallace, Max Porter, Helen Dewitt, Malcolm Lowry, Zoe Wicomb, Nelson Algren, Gavin Corbett, Lisa McInerney, Thomas Morris, Conor O'Callaghan, Niamh Campbell, Chetna Maroo, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, David Means, Flann O'Brien, David Markson, Roberto Bolano, Annie Ernaux, Claire-Louise Bennett, Martin MacInnes, Sally Rooney, China Mieville, George Saunders, Keith Ridgway, B.S. Johnson, Denis Johnson, Nicola Barker & Eimear MacBride.

I lecture on writing, with a particular interest in innovative fiction in both short and long forms. Having published widely in the prose form, I lecture on modules including:

• Reading The Novel Creatively
• The Short Story
• Fiction Workshops
• Writing For Other Media (which includes components on the long-form essay, podcasting, radio adaptation, blogging & v-logging, among other forms).