The Irish Goodbye
What can we learn from an ordinary life observed with extraordinary skill? In The Irish Goodbye, Beth Ann Fennelly writes of the small moments that shape a life, whether moving, perplexing, or troubling, or gladdening, in the process dignifying the diminutive through the act of attention. Fennelly explores her roles as a friend, wife, mother, and daughter, documenting a brush with an old flame or the devastating death of her sister in crystalline, precise sentences.
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Beth Ann Fennelly, a 2020 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, was the poet laureate of Mississippi from 2016 to 2021 and teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi. She has won grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States Artists, a Pushcart, and a Fulbright to Brazil. Fennelly has published three books of poetry and four of prose. Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs (W.W. Norton) was an Atlanta Journal-Constitution Best Book. Her newest, The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs, was published by W.W. Norton in 2026. A contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire, and other outlets, she lives with her husband, Tom Franklin, and their three children in Oxford, MS.
