Michelle Gallen Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

Michelle Gallen is a published author of fiction.

She was born in the nineteen seventy’s in Tyrone. She grew up during the Troubles just a few miles from what they said was the “Free” State and the “United” Kingdom.

Michelle attended Trinity College Dublin where she studied English literature. She won several prestigious prizes as a young writer before experiencing a devastating brain injury when she was in her mid-twenties.

Her debut was the novel Big Girl, Small Town. It is being adapted for television by Lookout Point, a BBC production company. It did well with the awards and made the shortlist for the Costa First Novel Award, an Irish Book Award, the Kate O’Brien Award and the Comedy Women in Print Award. It made the longlist for the RSL Ondaatje prize.

Gallen’s second novel, Factory Girls, was published in the United States of America, Ireland, and the United Kingdom in 2022.

The author is married and resides in Dublin with her husband and their children.

Big Girl, Small Town is the first novel from Michelle Gallen. In this Irish debut, Michelle Gallen introduces the audience to the unique heroine Majella O’Neill. Check out this story that has been describes as Milkman meets Derry Girls!

Majella is a young lady who is happiest when she’s out of the spotlight. There are many gossips and prying neighbors in the small town of Northern Ireland, a place that she grew up in just after the Troubles.

Majella has a quiet life where she cares for her alcoholic mother and works in the local chip shop watching all of her regular customers come and go as they please. She wears the same too small overalls each day and has the same dinner at night every night, which is fish and chips microwaved at her house after her shift ends. She even binge watches DVDs of the same television show over and over (Dallas) from her comfortable bed.

Despite all of this and her seemingly ordinary life is the fact that she doesn’t know where her father is and that each persons in her town has been affected by and changed by the divide that still lingers between Protestants and Catholics.

When her predictable life is turned upside down by the death of her granny, Majella realizes that there might be more to life than the chip shop, the pub, and the gossips in Aghybogey. There’s a great big world outside of the small town where she grew up.

Told by a fresh voice in fiction and with a heroine that readers will love, Big Girl, Small Town will be a favorite to fans of Sally Rooney and Ottessa Moshfegh and anyone who loves a good yarn with a relatable, fun female main character.

Factory Girls is the second novel from Michelle Gallen. If you have been looking for an unforgettable read, look no further! This is the story of a young woman who is working a summer job in a shirt factor in Northern Ireland, where tensions are growing both inside and outside the walls of the factory.

It is the summer of 1994, and Maeve Murray is a smart young girl with a smart mouth. All that she wants is to have good final exam results so she can get out of the small northern Irish town she grew up in during the Troubles.

She wants to be in London soon studying journalism, getting a break from the crowded home she lives in, the sadness and silence surrounding the death of her sister, and away from the violence of her divided community.

As a first step towards this new future, Maeve has taken a job in a shirt factory. She’s working alongside Protestants with her best friends. However, getting the right exam results is just part of her problem. She also has to survive a tit-for-tat paramilitary campaign, iron one hundred shirts an hour every day, and deal with the attentions of her slick English boss Andy Strawbridge, who is totally untrustworthy.

Then, as the British loyalist marching season raises the tensions among the Catholic and Protestant workforce, Maeve starts to realize there is something happening behind the scenes at the factory. But what seems like an opportunity to earn money ends up being a crucible where Maeve faces the test of a lifetime. Her one way ticked out of town may just come from seeking justice for herself and her coworkers.

Hilarious, clear eyed, and in the vernacular of the time and place, this novel takes on questions of nationalism, religion, power, and wealth, as well as how young women maintain hope for the future during turbulent times. Read this book from Michelle Gallen to absorb it all!