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16 Jan/Feb 2017
SOCIAL NEWS
Law Society Gazette | gazette.ie
THREE-BOOK DEAL FOR SOCIETY STAFF MEMBER
Law Society staff member Maria
Hoey is on top of the (literary)
world. She has just signed a threebook
deal with publishers Poolbeg.
Maria, who is PA to the Society’s
president, told the Gazette that
she has been writing short stories
since the age of eight.
Her book, The Last Lost Girl,
is her debut novel but, unlike
those many authors who submit
their manuscript in the hope that a
publisher will recognise its literary
worth, Maria can’t claim to be able
to paper her walls with publishers’
rejection slips.
“This was my first time to contact
a publisher,” says Maria, “and
the book was accepted by Poolbeg
first time round.” It would appear
that Poolbeg wasn’t the only publisher
to see its promise. A short
time after Poolbeg’s letter of acceptance,
she received an expression of
interest from another publisher.
The Last Lost Girl is a novel
about a teenage girl who goes
missing from North County Dublin
in the 1970s. Forty years later,
her younger sister decides to try
to unravel the mystery. The novel
moves between the hot summer of
The spring outing of the Lady Solicitors’
Golf Society (LSGS) will take
place at the Killeen Golf Club, Kill,
Co Kildare, on 7 April 2017. The
autumn outing will take place at
Glasson Golf Club, Athlone, on 8
September. Last autumn, the LSGS
played for the Quinlan Trophy at
the Hermitage Golf Club, where the
winner was Vicki Robinson (right).
She was presented with the cup by
Michael Quinlan (on behalf of his
mother Moya) and Christine Scott
(captain, 2016). For further information
on the LSGS, contact Christine
Scott at cmscott@eircom.net.
Maria with publisher Paula Campbell
1976 in north Dublin and a contemporary
English seaside town.
The genre has been described
by the publishers as ‘grip lit’ – or
‘fiction with an edge’.
Maria started the novel five
years ago but took a break from it.
She completed it last year, thanks
in the main to being awarded a
writer’s residency in the Tyrone
Guthrie Centre in Co Monaghan.
“That’s where the Muse spoke and
I finally pulled the whole thing
together,” she says.
She submitted the book to
Poolbeg last September and
was offered a three-book deal in
November. The Last Lost Girl will
LADY SOLICITORS’ GOLF SOCIETY –
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
PICS: CIAN REDMOND PHOTOGRAPHY
be published in July 2017.
Originally from Swords in Co
Dublin – the inspiration for the
fictional Irish town in her novel
– Maria admits to “always having
been intrigued by missing persons
cases, how the affected families
reconcile themselves with those
situations – and the not knowing.
“I combined this intrigue with
my obsession for the 1970s, when
I was a teenager. My memories
of that decade are so vivid. So I
thought why not combine those
two things, and the hot summer
of ’76?
“I’m absolutely steeped in
Agatha Christie and PD James.
My story was always going to have
a dark underbelly.”
Maria is no stranger to being
recognised for her writing. She
won the Swords’ Festival Short
Story Competition in 1998, was
shortlisted for the Michael McLaverty
Short Story Award 2010, was
runner-up in the Mslexia Women’s
Short Fiction Competition 2011,
was shortlisted for The Irish Times
Amateur Travel Writer Competition
2015, and her poetry has twice
been published by Poetry Ireland.