Limerick university lecturer wins prestigious international book award

LOCAL author Tracy Fahey who lectures at the Limerick School of Art and Design, TUS, has been awarded the prestigious 2025 Rubery International Book Award for her critically acclaimed body-terror collection 'I Spit Myself Out'.

Described by the London Review of Books as ‘independent publishing’s response to the Booktrust and the Orange Prize,’ the Rubery International Book Award is one of the UK’s most respected literary prizes for independent and small-press authors.

'I Spit Myself Out,' first published in 2021 by Bristol-based Sinister Horror Company, and shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award in 2022, offers eighteen unsettling stories that map the female experience from puberty to menopause.

In this collection, an Anatomical Venus opens to display her organs, in a mysterious clinic, clients disappear one by one, a police investigation reveals family secrets, revenge is inked in the skin, and bodies pulsate in the throes of illness, childbirth and religious ritual. The opening story, ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror,’ has been reprinted in the British Library’s Doomed Romances anthology, and five of its stories made US editor Ellen Datlow’s list of Recommended Reading for 2022.

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This award adds to Tracy's growing list of accolades. Described by Lol Tolhurst of the Cure as ‘a modern-day gothic whose Kafkaesque otherworldly stories are beautifully disturbing,’ she won the Paul Cave Prize For Literature in 2024, a Finnish Saari Fellowship in 2023, and has been shortlisted three times for British Fantasy Awards, most recently in 2024 for PS Publishing’s Absinthe novella They Shut Me Up.

However, for Tracy, this newest win is bittersweet. 'I Spit Myself Out' went out of print in 2023 due to the closure of the original press, just two years after its publication, and she is actively seeking a new publishing home to bring it back into circulation.

Only a very limited number of first editions remain on sale, locally available at Banner Books in Ennistymon and Kilrush.

For Tracey, this book is arguably more relevant than ever. "I Spit Myself Out is part of a wave of contemporary body-horror typified by Mona Awad, Carmen Maria Machado, and Aliya Whiteley."

"In I Spit Myself Out, the themes of identity, aging, bodily autonomy, and coercive control, remain culturally urgent. I’m confident that a new edition of I Spit Myself Out would resonate with readers of contemporary horror, feminist writing, and literary short fiction alike".

The Sixmilebridge resident is excited to have the additional validation of the Rubery International Book Award. "Winning the Rubery Award proves there’s appetite for narratives that centre the female body as a site of resistance against patriarchal, societal and political oppression. In this era that refracts current female concerns through the lens of horror—like 2024 movies Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch—it’s time to bring this book back into the world," expressed Tracy.

Her next project, Queens of the Crone Age, centres again on the female figure and will include her Paul Cave-prize-winning novella, 'What Happens At The End'. UK publishers PS Publishing said: "We are delighted to publish Fahey's next upcoming project, scheduled for 2026 - a linked short story collection exploring the resurrection of the powerful, mythological figure of the Hag in the contemporary world—and what this resurrection provokes".

Tracy Fahey is an author and academic, who lectures in the Gothic, folk horror, and creative writing at the Limerick School of Art and Design, TUS. Recent publications include 'They Shut Me Up' (PS Publishing, 2023) which was shortlisted for the 2024 British Fantasy Award and her novella 'What Happens at the End' which won The Paul Cave Prize for Literature in 2024.

Her stories have appeared in over 50 Irish, UK, US and Australian anthologies. She has been selected for writing residencies in Ireland, Scotland, Finland and Greece. Her next book, Queens of the Crone Age, is out in 2026 with PS Publishing.