Irish writer and journalist Ana Kinsella makes a striking entrance into fiction with her debut novel, Frida Slattery As Herself, set for release by Ecco on May 5, 2026. The novel traces the seventeen-year relationship between Frida Slattery, a young Irish actress, and John Reddan, a visionary and often difficult director, following their intertwined lives across Dublin, London, New York, and Los Angeles.
From their first encounter in a Dublin pub in 2006, Frida and John recognize potential in each other, both creatively and personally. What begins as artistic collaboration evolves into a complicated bond where friendship, desire, ambition, and exploitation blur. Against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis, the #MeToo movement, and the disruptions of COVID, Kinsella explores how career, creativity, and personal choices intersect, shaping not only their work but their lives.
Elif Batuman, acclaimed author of Either/Or and The Idiot, praises the novel as “a deft, profound, and seemingly effortless portrayal of how a series of artworks—as well as the personal and professional lives of the artists—take shape over fifteen years.” Batuman highlights Kinsella’s ability to blend comic-romantic pleasures with weighty themes like gender politics, financial precarity, and the complexities of artistic collaboration.
Kinsella’s inspiration for the novel comes from her own journalistic career, during which she interviewed Irish creatives working abroad. These experiences illuminated the push and pull of ambition versus home, and the trade-offs artists make in their careers. She observed the delicate balance between pursuing meaningful work and navigating commercial pressures, asking: “What of the roads not taken, the choices to take work that is more commercial or less, more lucrative or much, much less so?”
Through Frida and John, Kinsella captures the enduring impact of relationships that intersect with pivotal moments in life. “Above all,” she says, “this is a novel about the people who have the greatest impact on us—who find us at the most crucial moments—and what we owe them as time passes and we grow apart.”
Frida Slattery As Herself is an intimate, sweeping portrait of ambition, love, and the sacrifices inherent in pursuing an artistic life. With its rich exploration of character, place, and the choices that define a career, the novel is already being compared to the works of Meg Wolitzer, Ann Patchett, and Sally Rooney. Kinsella establishes herself as a major new voice in contemporary fiction, offering readers a thoughtful, moving, and utterly captivating debut.