Tim Groenland
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Tim Groenland
@groenbot.bsky.social
1.7K followers 1.5K following 500 posts
Academic in Dublin. Contemporary literature & publishing.
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groenbot.bsky.social
Just finished Flesh the other day, thought it was excellent, but lol at this final line
Johanna Thomas-Corr, Sunday Times ‘Once or twice a year, I discover a novelist who is so exciting to read I want to share their work with everyone I know – the kind of writer who makes me want to write fiction… It’s rare to find prose this spare that doesn’t feel affected, but Szalay handles surface and depth with skill, as only great novelists can. Flesh is a revelatory novel that will make you look afresh at every eastern European doorman or bouncer you encounter.’
November 10, 2025 at 10:16 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
Today's class is on translation, translators, and the labour of translation - reading this by @jencalleja.bsky.social
A copy of Jen Calleja's FAIR: The Life-Art of Translation (Prototype, 2025)
November 6, 2025 at 11:20 AM
groenbot.bsky.social
They're calling it the wholesomest Saturday morning they've ever seen
November 1, 2025 at 12:43 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
We have postcards
Postcards advertising the Dublin Small Press Fair, designed by Éireann Lorsung
October 29, 2025 at 12:49 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
A British soldier approaches

From Liadan Ní Chuinn's "Daisy Hill"
October 23, 2025 at 7:56 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
Stack for today's class on literary journals
Recent issues of Irish literary journals: Fallow, Channel, Tolka, Sonder, Sans. Press (#8, 'The Garden'), The Pig's Back, The Dublin Review, Poetry Ireland Review, profiles, The Stinging Fly, Crannóg, Southword, Holy Show
October 23, 2025 at 9:29 AM
groenbot.bsky.social
Learning about Christy Kinahan Sr's fondness for açai bowls
In some matters, Kinahan, Sr., who is now sixty-eight, has behaved as naïvely as his son. For a while, he maintained a LinkedIn account, on which he posed as a “senior consultant” in the aviation sector, with degrees from the Open University. He also posted regularly on Twitter, expressing admiration for Vladimir Putin and promoting anti-vax theories. These public profiles were shut down in 2022. But, in 2024, Bellingcat, the open-source-investigations team, published a colorful story about how Kinahan, Sr., had left hundreds of traces of himself online, often using his first and middle names, Christopher Vincent. There were dozens of Google reviews of restaurants. In one post, Kinahan, Sr., wrote, of the Cycle Bistro, in Dubai: “I had the açai bowl, followed by eggs with almond bread and green salad. My meal was well presented and tasty. I give this establishment five stars.”
October 20, 2025 at 8:58 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
Some new ones
DEEP BURN by Brendan Mac Evilly (Marrowbone Books), BIG KISS, BYE-BYE by Claire Louise Bennett (Fitzcarraldo), WHAT REMAINS by Brais Lamela, trans. Jacob Rogers (Bullaun)
October 18, 2025 at 10:12 AM
groenbot.bsky.social
The inaugural Dublin Small Press Fair is happening at the end of November!

30+ presses, events, readings, and more. Organised by me and @eireannmor.bsky.social. More information coming very soon - follow @dublinsmpressfair.bsky.social for updates
Flyer for the Dublin Small Press Fair, 28/29 November, Pearse Steeet Library
October 15, 2025 at 2:02 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
This novel features a German football team winning promotion to a higher division - in November. What happened to doing your research?
On The Calculation of Volume II by Solvej Balle
October 14, 2025 at 10:19 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
This is one of the albums of the century, and it already seemed like a huge bonus when it arrived. RIP.
D'Angelo and The Vanguard, Black Messiah
October 14, 2025 at 4:48 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
Also looking at some favourite examples, like the bit in Lost Children Archive when the family can't agree on an audiobook for the car
The lost children’s stories are troubling our own children. We decide to stop listening to the news, at least when they are awake. We decide to listen, instead, to music. Or, better, to audiobooks. “When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night…,” says the voice of the man on the car speakers, “he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.” I press Stop as soon as it pauses at the end of the sentence. My husband and I agree that Cormac McCarthy, although we both like him, and even if we especially like The Road, seems a little too rough for the children. Also, we agree that whoever is reading for this audiobook version is an actor acting—tries too hard, breathes too loud—instead of a person reading. So I press Stop. Then I scroll down and press Play on another audiobook.
October 13, 2025 at 11:15 AM
groenbot.bsky.social
They're not even allowed one?
No Homers Club
October 13, 2025 at 10:17 AM
groenbot.bsky.social
Specifically, the great essay by @benfried.bsky.social on William Maxwell, which appeared in the special issue that I co-edited with Evan Brier: post45.org/2024/07/will...
October 6, 2025 at 1:07 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
Catching up on this recent piece in the Irish Times, I see that the New Yorker's editors are reading @post45.bsky.social
"It’s hard to imagine New Yorker fiction without the contributions of the many Irish writers who have been published in the magazine, but the first notable Irish story didn’t appear until 1945, two decades after the magazine’s founding. That was Frank O’Connor’s News for the Church, which is set chiefly in a confessional in Ballygrogan, Co Cork. A couple of years earlier, as the scholar Ben Fried has noted, one of the magazine’s fiction editors, William Maxwell, rejected a story from a Tennessee-born writer with the somewhat rueful observation: “The story belongs to a world that is essentially remote from New York City. The editors have in their minds an imaginary map of Manhattan which includes, strangely, all of Connecticut and Long Island, Florida, New Jersey, Hollywood, and wherever New Yorkers go.” Quote from Cressida Leyshon, deputy fiction editor of the New Yorker
October 6, 2025 at 1:02 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
Dropped in to the Dublin Comic Arts Festival @dublincomicarts.bsky.social with my 7-year-old and he persuaded me to buy this toaster ghost
A ghost holding a toaster in the bath, accompanied by a rubber duck
October 5, 2025 at 1:05 PM
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The Art of the Journal: A conversation about small press publishing, artistic communities, art and writing

-feat. Órla Goodwin, Rita Hynes, and Brendan Mac Evilly
radio.moli.ie/r/art-of-jou...

Episode 3 in Books and Their Makers, my occasional podcast series with
@molimuseum.bsky.social
Image of me and the participants mentioned in the post (this was recorded live at one of MoLI's First Friday events a few months ago)
September 25, 2025 at 3:50 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
Hermes bag: 20k

Documented donations to the Iona Institute from far-right groups like the Novae Terrae Foundation: at least 25k?

The grassroots desire for an alternative voice: priceless
Screenshot of Gavan Reilly reporting that Maria Steen 'claims the political consensus has never been so out of kilter with the grassroots desire for an alternative voice'; reply from Sinéad Gleeson pointing out the jarringly high value of the bag Steen is clutching in the photo
September 24, 2025 at 12:29 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
Fun thing about teaching contemporary publishing is that you can throw the day's headlines into your slides for tomorrow
A powerpoint slide with a screengrab of a Bookseller story noting that Penguin Random House published four of the six titles on the Booker shortlist (with a nod to Dan Sinykin's work on the 'conglomerate era' of publishing
September 24, 2025 at 12:24 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
Love to find #inspiration inside my italian chocolate 💫
"You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star" - Friedrich Nietszche
September 18, 2025 at 6:57 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
Our brave councillors are all that stands between us and the most horrifically US-pilled election of our lifetimes
Multiple councillors called out point of order as Mulligan said that “Ireland needs to be saved” and that the country needs to “close our borders very fast”. One councillor called for her mic to be turned off. However, Councillor Malachy Steenson said that there had been attempts in the chamber to “shut down” Mulligan, and he then proceeded to start speaking about the murdered far-right commentator Charlie Kirk, which drew groans from the chamber. Mulligan then said she was dedicating her speech to Kirk, and that she “stands with Elon Musk”. “Oh mammy,” one councillor could be heard exclaiming.
September 16, 2025 at 4:30 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
Polish fridge in my local Supervalu has been shut down and rebranded as an Italian one. Am currently composing an indignant letter to the paper
A fridge filled with Italian produce, topped with two tricolore
September 7, 2025 at 10:17 AM
groenbot.bsky.social
I've spent this week in the east of Romania, where my dad lives these days. The grapes are almost ready
Grapes Field with sunflowers A well in the local village Landscape of rolling hills
August 30, 2025 at 11:51 AM
groenbot.bsky.social
This is arriving just in time to go straight onto the reading list - from Rachel Noorda and @corinnanorue.bsky.social
Research Methods in Publishing and Book Studies. By Rachel Noorda and Corinna Norrick-Rühl
August 21, 2025 at 7:24 PM
groenbot.bsky.social
Spent a few hours with this and have become officially Balle-pilled, ready for six more
On the Calculation of Volume 1, by Solvej Balle
August 19, 2025 at 9:55 PM