Devotions

A striking new collection from Lucy Caldwell--winner of the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and the BBC National Short Story Award

"Throughout her eight stories, her touch is so light, her observations so perceptive, her dialogue chattering off the page, that she more than underscores her reputation as one of the best practitioners of the short-form craft."--Financial Times

In Devotions, "one of the finest short story writers at work today" (Wendy Erskine) explores yearning for distant pasts and unknown futures. A young Belfast theatre troupe brings their experimental production of Hamlet to New York. On a night-flight, travelling with a violin older than the United States, a professional musician slips through time. A man who loses all he thought he had, and finds himself haunted by all he never will, comes to a painful new understanding of what it might mean to love. Transporting and profound, these are stories of love, grief, longing, of new beginnings, and the ways we find shelter in each other.

Author: Lucy Caldwell
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 06/30/2026
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.48lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.20w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780571398256


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 04/13/2026

About the Author
Born in Belfast in 1981, Lucy
Caldwell is the author of four
novels, several stage plays
and radio dramas, and three
previous collections of short
stories. Elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Literature
in 2018, she was also the
editor of Being Various: New
Irish Short Stories in 2019,
and has won the E. M. Forster
Award, from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters,
and the Walter Scott Prize
among others.