Authors today are not what they used to be. No longer reclusive personalities hunched over their drafts behind closed doors, they are all over social media: vociferous on X, animated or “relatable” on Instagram, and downright weird with their ramblings on Substack. Like most creatives today, they’ve been told that if they want to make it big, they have to work on their social media brand or be their own PRs.
That’s what makes Liadan Ní Chuinn a bit of an enigma, and every bit of an anomaly. In an Elena Ferrante-style move, the Gen Z author of Irish origin has decided to reveal very little of their identity (besides that pseudonym), so the discourse today is mainly around their collection of short stories, Every One Still Here. Is it a career blunder in this let’s-broadcast-every-thought-we-have generation or the smartest move to cut through the noise that is social media and bring, in a remarkable way, the focus back to where it belongs? In this case, on these stories from northern Ireland.
For now, Liadan Ní Chuinn is the biggest talking point in small literary circles. And is likely to stay that, until a Ferrante-like witch-hunt threatens everything.
Talking of people and places that seem like a refreshing antidote to the oversharing residents of the internet today, there’s a new restaurant in Hyderabad that has none of the Insta-bait that visuals-obsessed diners come looking for. There’s no cocktail theatre—just plates of good food that’ll make you go back again. For more, scroll below.
