Originally published by The Stinging Fly Press in Ireland on 2015, Claire-Louise Bennett’s POND found a wider audience with its UK publisher, the then nascent Fitzcarraldo Editions—the paradigm-shifting house that is currently celebrating its 10th birthday. POND is an extraordinarily erudite book, which wears that erudition extraordinarily lightly. It could be understood as being in dialogue with writers such as Huysmans, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, John Berger, as well as with any number of contemporary authors who feel determined that their books should be about something. But POND is also funny, earthy, dirty, silly, profound and confounding. In short, it is unlike anything else, the kind of book that defies the “if you liked this, you’ll like that” algorithm. Just the kind of book we love at S&Co.

Buy Pond: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/pond

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Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton, before moving to Ireland where she worked in and studied theatre for several years. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize and went on to complete her debut book, Pond, which was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016. Checkout 19 was published by Jonathan Cape in 2021 and was part of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2022 Selection.

Claire-Louise's fiction and essays have appeared in a number of publications including The White Review, The Stinging Fly, gorse, Harper's Magazine, Vogue Italia, Music & Literature, and The New York Times magazine. She also writes about art and is a frequent contributor to frieze. In addition she has written for Tate etc., and Artforum, and a number of international exhibition catalogues. In 2016 she was writer-in-residence at Temple Bar Gallery & Studio. In 2020, Milan based art publisher Juxta Press published Fish Out Of Water, an essay Claire-Louise wrote in response to a self-portrait painting by Dorothea Tanning. 

Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-england

Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w

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