Credit: Jo Ritchie
New Island Books has announced the forthcoming publication of Commonplace, a deeply moving and resonant Irish-in-Britain memoir by Laura McDonagh, which will be released in Spring 2027.
Capturing the distinctive experience of growing up second generation Irish in North East England, Commonplace is an intimate exploration of place, cultural identity and belonging – for anyone who has ever felt caught between two worlds.
When Laura McDonagh’s mother died suddenly in 2019, the practical questions arrived first, urgent and unrelenting: what kind of coffin – wooden or wicker? Does the undertaker need tights and shoes? Where do you bury a woman whose life spanned countries and identities – from her childhood in Ireland, teenage years in Camden Town, and most of her adult life in North East England?
But after the funeral, more complex questions begin to surface for her daughter, Laura, as her own childhood and the decisions of her immigrant parents flood in. How will she hold onto the past without being held back by it? Can she peace with a lifelong sense of displacement, duality and discomfort? And when there is no one answer to ‘Where are you from?’, can Laura ever truly call anywhere home?
Tender, searching and beautifully observed, Commonplace reflects on grief, inheritance and the quiet complexities of identity. McDonagh’s writing illuminates the emotional landscape of diaspora experience with honesty and nuance, offering a voice to those navigating the spaces between cultures, countries and selves.
With its blend of personal narrative and universal themes, Commonplace will resonate widely with readers of Kit de Waal, Emma Dabiri, Annie Macmanus and Sharon Horgan.
Aoife K. Walsh, Editorial Director at New Island, said: ‘Commonplace tells the lesser known story of the immigrant away from the urban metropolis. We instantly recognised her ambitious, hard-working, upwardly mobile mother, her resourceful and complex grandparents and her own search for belonging in every place but her home town. Yet we found something new to cherish in the North East setting and all the different ways she and her family have created their own identities as ‘outsiders’ in Britain. It firmly moves their story into the heart of the British experience.’
‘I’m feeling all the emotions at the prospect of Commonplace being out in the world – delight, excitement, mild terror – but the support of the New Island team has meant everything,' said Laura. 'They instantly ‘got it’ and have strengthened my faith that this story of place, memory and diasporic doubleness needs to be told. I’m lucky to be in such good company in terms of humans and titles.’
Laura McDonagh is a second-generation Irish writer living in North East England. Her work explores memory, place, cultural identity and the experience of being Irish in Britain. Her writing has been listed for the Life Writing Prize, the Fish Short Memoir Prize and a Creative Futures Award, and published in The Irish Times, Sans. PRESS and Stand Magazine. She is also the writer and interviewer behind Projecting Grief – a photography and storytelling project exploring grief as a catalyst for creativity.