Greenisland Press

Greenisland Press

Greenisland Press is an Irish imprint of Elsinor Verlag (Coesfeld, Germany) which we established in 2022 as a not-for-profit publishing venture. The following titles are generally available but can be purchased from:

An Fhuiseog/The Lark Store, 51/53 Falls Road, Belfast – www.thelarkstore.ie

Sinn Fein Bookshop, 58 Parnell Square, Dublin – www.sinnfeinbookshop.com

An Ceathrú Póilí, An Chulturlann, 216 Falls Road, Belfast – www.anceathrupoili.com/en

Latest from Greenisland Press

Interview with Martin Taylor

Interview with Martin Taylor

Martin Taylor was interviewed by Andersonstown News' editor Anthony Neeson in last week's edition of the paper. Here is a copy of that interview: SOMETHING of a legend himself, it should be no surprise that Falls Road man Martin Taylor would pen a book inspired by the...

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TARAT HARRAH – Warrior of Tara

TARAT HARRAH – Warrior of Tara

Greenisland Press is proud to publish Martin Taylor's young adult book, Tarat, a story about a young boy growing up in Ireland, while living in Tara with his parents. Tara is a place that is steeped in Irish folklore, a place where the High Kings of Ireland sat and...

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ALL THE DEAD VOICES

ALL THE DEAD VOICES

My updated memoir, All The Dead Voices, was launched last Friday, 1 August, in the courtyard of Glór na Móna, Ballymurphy, in front of an audience of about one hundred people. The event—part of Féile an Phobail—was chaired by veteran republican Liam Stone. One of the...

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Eventual Redemption

Eventual Redemption

Writer, poet and ecopsychologist Anthony Hegarty’s review of Longlines by Caoilte Breatnach is published both here at Greenisland Press and on Caoilte’s website. -oo0oo- JJ Hynes, a veteran of the Troubles in Derry and Belfast, has sacrificed his life, marriage,...

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‘Morning Star’ Review

‘Morning Star’ Review

The recently published book—Rita—A Memoir—was reviewed in the Morning Star, the left-wing British daily newspaper which focuses on social, political and trade union issues. The reviewer is Richard Rudkin who served with the British Army in the North in the 1970s: AS a...

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The Underground Prison Press

The Underground Prison Press

Former blanket man and H-Block prisoner, Eoghan Mac Cormaic's latest book, Captive Columns, was recently reviewed by Kevin Mullan in the Derry Journal. Here is the review: Eoghan ‘Gino’ Mac Cormaic’s new history of the underground prison press provides an overview of...

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Hugo Hamilton

Hugo Hamilton

Award-winning writer and playwright Hugo Hamilton has praised this first novel from Caoilte Breatnach. Hugo wrote: ‘Longlines is a powerful encounter with recent Irish history. A thrilling novel of escape and redemption. An IRA man on the run from the past returns to...

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Rita – A Memoir

Rita – A Memoir

The most recent publication by Greenisland Press, Rita—A Memoir, was launched during Féile an Phobail in West Belfast to an audience of almost four hundred people on 3 August in St Mary's University College. Gerry Adams chaired the proceedings and guest speakers...

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Greenisland Press Books

All The Dead Voices

All The Dead Voices by Danny Morrison

Danny Morrison’s updated memoir celebrates the lives of family, friends and comrades and of those who influenced him. In 1971 he found it impossible to study against a background of British Army raids and killings, and the explosion of IRA activity which followed the introduction of internment. Morrison left college and joined the republican struggle. By November 1972 he was in Long Kesh, the first of four periods of imprisonment. He became a leading spokesperson for the Republican Movement and was prominent in the campaign for political status during which ten prisoners died on hunger strike in 1981. He was back in prison when the historic IRA ceasefire was called in August 1994 and after his release became a full-time writer. In vivid, tender, thought-provoking pieces, in prose of wry humour and others candid, bordering on anger and indignation, Danny Morrison celebrates the indomitable human spirit that sustains us through our darkest moments. The voices of the dead—speaking of their lives, their hopes and dreams—echo through this book.

Rita - A Memoir

Tarat Harrah by Martin Taylor, published August 2025

Tarat is a young adult book, a story about a young boy growing up in Ireland, while living in Tara with his parents. Tara is a place that is steeped in Irish folklore, a place where the High Kings of Ireland sat and ruled the land for thousands of years. With an unforeseeable twist of fate, Tarat’s life was about to dramatically change forever. In his Introduction Martin writes: ‘Fantasy, myths and legends are the dreams of every boy and girl and, if we’re truthful to ourselves as grown-ups, we still hunger at times for the youth that lies deep within all of us.

Rita - A Memoir

Rita – A Memoir, published August 2024

The late Rita O’Hare led an extraordinary life of activism, even in exile. She joined the IRA, was shot and seriously wounded by the British Army, was imprisoned three times, became editor of An Phoblacht, Sinn Féin Director of Publicity, and was the party’s representative in Washington for 20 years. Nelson Mandela, whom she met twice, called her his ‘little warrior’. However, the British were vindictive to the end and refused to lift extradition charges against her dating from 1971. This posthumous memoir is also a loving tribute to her husband Brendan Brownlee, and her children.

Captive Columns

Captive Columns by Eoghan Mac Cormaic, published May 2024

‘Plotting was the natural consequence of the isolation we were detained in,’ wrote John Sarsfield Casey, a Fenian prisoner in Pentonville in 1866, facing deportation. The prisoners established lines of communication to keep connected to each other and to the outside world.
Republicans constantly defied and resisted authority. They smuggled; they planned escapes; and they disseminated news and told their stories in a literature which was central to morale and the integrity of the struggle. In Captive Columns Eoghan Mac Cormaic (who served fifteen years in prison, including over four years on the blanket in the H-Blocks) looks at the literature of the republican press which saw the production of over sixty prison titles—often handwritten or typed. From the pinpricked sheets of toilet paper in Pentonville to Bobby Sands’s poetry, written on toilet paper and smuggled out to be published, this is an astonishing story which has never been examined in such detail before.

Longlines

Longlines by Caoilte Breatnach, published May 2024

JJ Hynes, a veteran IRA activist, has sacrificed everything for the struggle. When an operation goes wrong he finds refuge in Holland before being called back to Ireland to help convince sceptical IRA Volunteers of the merits of the ceasefire and peace process. History, politics, and the possibility of redemption come together in a narrative that reads like a thriller but asks serious and important questions about the interweaving of personal and national trauma.

McCoubrey

McCoubrey by Mark B. McCaffery, published April 2024

A hilarious and enthralling coming-of-age of story set in Portadown, beginning in 1971 as the conflict spreads from Derry and Belfast to engulf small and isolated nationalist communities. Told in the sardonic voice of young Barry-Joe McCaffrey on the cusp of his teens, who reflects on his own life, his family, his troubled neighbourhood—and girls! Barry-Joe rebels against the inconsistencies and double-standards of the world: ‘the phonies’, as Holden McCaulfield put it.

The pen behind the wire

The pen behind the wire by Eoghan ‘Gino’ Mac Cormaic, published 2023

Poems written when Gino Mac Cormaic was on the blanket protest in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh (he served fifteen years in total); and other poems written after the prisoners won back their political status. They allow us to look with the POWs from their cell windows out into the wider world where hopes and dreams might be realised someday.

Curious Journey

Curious Journey by Timothy O’Grady and the late Kenneth Griffith, published 2022

Reissued with an updated introduction, the classic book first published in 1982 features interviews with nine republican veterans who lived into old age and who speak about their struggle and the tortuous complexities of a post-Treaty divided Ireland. Their testimony was recorded at a time when war again raged in Ireland in the north-east, a war hauntingly like the one of their youth.

Rewriting The Troubles

Rewriting The Troubles – War and Propaganda, Ireland and Algeria by Pat Anderson, published 2022

Dr Patrick Anderson compares and contrasts Algeria’s anti-colonial struggle with the republican campaign to dismantle Britain’s colonial legacy. Comparing the French and British armies, the ALN and IRA, loyalists and OAS ‘counter-terrorists’, Anderson dissects, with devastating effect, the approach of ‘constitutional’ politicians and the respective media portrayals in an analogy that for critics will be too close for comfort.

Rewriting The Troubles

Free Statism & The Good Old IRA, by Danny Morrison, published 2022

From its inception and through its many incarnations from Free State to Éire to the Republic of Ireland the establishment and mainstream media in the South have promoted a partitionist mind-set – Free Statism. They abandoned the nationalist community in the North to its fate as victims of sectarian rule and British repression. Their demonization of republicans has only intensified with the electoral rise of Sinn Féin.

They condemned the republican struggle while simultaneously commemorating the IRA campaign during the Tan War as the legitimate, justifiable deeds of a nation fighting to end British rule in Ireland. Except, of course, the fighting didn’t end British rule in Ireland but bequeathed a conflict to another generation.

The Good Old IRA examines the nature of the Tan War, bomb and gun attacks, the killings of RIC men, on- and off-duty, the execution of informers, the IRA campaign in England, and other multiple-parallels between two struggles separated only by time.