Colin Barrett Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Colin Barrett
Colin Barrett was born April 26, 1982 in Fort McMurray, Canada, and was brought up in County Mayo. Upon leaving Canada for Ireland when he was four years old, he spent his childhood in Knockmore, between Foxford and Ballina in County Mayo, with his parents and four siblings. Colin was on Gaelic football teams as an adolescent in Ballina.

Colin studied at University of College, Dublin, and was awarded a BA in English, 2003; MA in Creative Writing, 2009; and MFA in Creative Writing, 2015.

Colin began his literary career with comics during his childhood before moving on to poetry and books as an adult. For his earlier works, he would spend 10 years not finishing anything. One of the short stories he never finished was called “Ontario”. In between his college studies, he was hired by Vodafone as their customer representative from 2003 until 2008.

“Let’s Go Kill Ourselves”, Colin’s first published short story, appeared in the Winter 2009-10 issue of The Stinging Fly literary magazine. During the years that followed he worked on some material which later featured in “Young Skins”.

While creating his stories, Colin said he’d look for a tiny detail and expand upon it further. He also focuses on the people rather than the events to make his works. Some inspirations include Denis Johnson and Flannery O’Connor.

He received numerous awards for “Young Skins”. These include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2014 and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. “Wild Houses” was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.

For adaptations of his short stories, two of his pieces were made into plays for the New Theatre, Dublin, in 2017 as “Calm With Horses” made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019. the movie starred Barry Keoghan and Cosmo Jarvis and was directed by Nick Rowland.

“Young Skins” is a short story collection that was released in 2013. Colin’s “Young Skins” is a stunning introduction to a singular voice in contemporary fiction, and it made a remarkable entrance onto the UK and Irish literary scene with some rave reviews in The Guardian and The Sunday Times.

Enter the rural and small town of Glanbeigh, this place whose fate took a downturn with the Celtic Tiger, this desolate spot where buffoonery and tension simmer and erupt, and booze sodden boredom fills up the corners of each and every nightclub and pub. Here, as well as in the towns beyond, the young live hard and wear their scars.

Among them, there is the jilted Jimmy, whose best buddy is Tug, who is the terror of the town and Jimmy’s only company in his quest to find the missing Clancy kid. Bat is a lovesick soul with a face like a “bowl of mashed up spuds” even before Nubbin Tansey’s boot kicked it right in. There’s also Arm, this young and desperate criminal whose destiny becomes shaped once he and Dympna (his partner) fail to carry their job out. In every story, this local voice delineates the grittiness of Irish society; some unforgettable characters whose psychological complexities and unspoken yearnings are rendered through violence, silence, and humor.

With power and some originality akin to “Battleborn” by Claire Vaye Watkins and “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned” by Wells Tower these six short stories and an explosive novella occupy the melancholic and ghostly spaces in between boyhood and old age. Told in Colin’s distinctive and vibrant prose, this is an irreverent and accomplished debut from a brilliant new author.

“Homesickness” is a short story collection that was released in 2022. This is a wonderfully wry and emotionally resonant collection which follows the lives of misfits, outcasts, and malcontents from County Mayo to Canada.

In Colin’s follow up collection, he brings together 8 character driven tales, each one showcases his inimitably observant eye and his darkly funny style.

One quiet nightclub in a local pub gets ruined by the arrival of this sword wielding fugitive. This shooting sees one veteran policewoman face the banality of her own existence. One funeral party teeters on the edge of this world and the next, while ghosts simply will not lay in wake. One aspiring writer grapples with his dad’s cancer diagnosis and in his own despair wreaks some havoc upon his mentor’s life.

“Homesickness” marks Colin out as our most brilliantly original and captivating storyteller.

“Wild Houses” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 2024. A deeply moving and darkly funny debut about dreams abandoned, crimes of desperation, and small town secrets that refuse to remain buried.

While Ballina in the west of Ireland gets ready for its largest weekend of the year, the simmering feud between Cillian English (small time dealer) and County Mayo’s fraternal enforcers (Sketch and Gabe Ferdia) spills over into violence and a rather ugly ultimatum. When Dev answers his door on Friday night, he sees Doll (Cillian’s bruised and sullen teen brother) in the clutches of Sketch and Gabe. Jostled by his nefarious cousins, goaded along by his dead mom’s dog, and struck by spinning lights, Dev gets drawn headlong unwillingly into the Ferdias’ revenge fantasy.

All the while, Nicky (17 years old) cannot shake this feeling that something bad’s happened to Doll, her boyfriend. Hungover, plagued by ghosts of her own, and reeling from a fractious Friday night, Nicky sets off on a feverish mission in order to save Doll, even while questioning her future in Ballina.

This is vivid, controlled, incredibly funny and moving. Colin has the sort of pure writing chops which are vanishingly rare. This is wild and vivid while Colin quietly and insistently writes so deeply into his characters that you could reach out and touch each one of them. This is a true gift of storytelling and his talent burns up the whole page.

He proved with his short stories that he isn’t just one of the most stylistically gifted writers working, but also one of the most generous. His first novel is intricate, deft, unique, and is restorative in its refusal to be anything but itself. He’s a talent of the rarest sort.