Polluted Sex
**Shortlisted, The Barbellion Prize**
**Shortlisted, The Irish Book Awards**
A pregnant woman takes the ferry to the UK.
A fractious intimate relationship develops between an Irish woman, an English man, and her girlfriend.
Two ungendered characters contest the same female body.
A deserted wife takes a lover but remains unsatisfied.
Lauren Foley’s debut collection of dramatic short stories, Polluted Sex, is fearless in its depiction of women’s bodies and sexuality, offering an unflinching window into Irish girl and womanhood.
‘With her form-bending debut collection, Polluted Sex, Irish/Australian Lauren Foley joins a cohort of contemporary authors — including Cathy Sweeney, Claire-Louise Bennett, Eimear McBride — whose work seems dissatisfied with narrative conventions. What happens when we blow them open? … Polluted Sex alternately challenges, interests, confuses, humours, shocks, and engages its reader. What art ought to do.’ — Irish Independent
‘Like Kathy Acker after a glut of whiskeys, these stories are seductive, hilarious, rejuvenating and intimate. Lauren Foley’s characters have barbarous tongues and know how to use them. Lacerating and sexy, the heat sears off (and through) the pages. A scorching portrait of the female psyche. Uncompromising and raw. A new voice in Irish fiction.’ — June Caldwell
‘Superb, subversive stories from Lauren Foley. Formally experimental—mini plays, time-stamped fragments, prose-as-prayer—work that’s political, comic and genuinely original.’ — Sinéad Gleeson
‘Lauren Foley’s debut Polluted Sex (Influx Press) … an explicit, raw, and at times surreal portrait of girl and womanhood, discovered through sexual and bodily adventure and misadventure. … Religion, desire and sin are laid bare and made strange in Foley’s succulent language that drips from the page like an overripe fruit, sweet but spoiling at the same time.’ — Books Ireland
‘Lauren Foley is a gifted, fearless writer. These vivid, dynamic stories range from the visceral to the experimental with moments of intense, expressive lyricism.’ — Lia Mills
‘Short stories filled with darkness and moments of pure gold.’ — Cristín Leach
Lauren Foley is a Next Generation Artist in Literature with the Arts Council of Ireland. Her work is published by Influx Press, gorse, Head of Zeus, The Los Angeles Review, No Alibis, The Irish Times and Overland and has been shortlisted for The Barbellion Prize and The Irish Book Awards.
