Rotten Books

02/06/2025

Join us this Thursday at for the official book launch of Fantasy Island 🕊️

19/04/2025

We’re moving!

We’ve been quietly publishing under the Rotten Books alias since ‘LSD and the Search for God’ came out in 2021 – but as our publishing work continues to grow, we want to create some breathing room between those titles and Rotten Magazine.

The magazine is going on hiatus (not gone forever!) and going forward, all updates about our publishing projects, new titles, and studio work will live over at

We’ve got some exciting things lined up this year, and will also be open for publishing submissions and design work soon.

21/03/2025

John Minihan

Famed for his iconic portraits of gargantuan figures in literature, music, and art; he photographed them all. William S. Burroughs once referred to Minihan as “a painless photographer”. Whatever that means.

Over the years, Minihan developed a close relationship with many writers and artists. He developed a lasting relationship with Francis Bacon, photographing the painter on numerous occasions, and his friendship with Samuel Beckett produced some of the most remarkable photographs ever taken of the writer.

In stark contrast to his press work, as an antidote to the world of celebrity, Minihan returned to his birthplace of Athy every year for 40 years to document the daily life of its inhabitants, producing an expansive, ethnographical body of work.

“As a photographer it was important to me to document the tradition that I came from,” he says. “How reverentially the Irish dressed the dead and prayed; that sharpened my vision quite a lot. In that rather funereal time that I was born in, what was prevalent in Athy was the smell of the hops.”

17/03/2025

Tabhair póg dom, is Éireannach mé!

13/03/2025

Matt Glover, selected works

captures chaos like no other. His work explores the tension in the space between maturity and immaturity - seen through the lives of young adults living in Northern Ireland.

In his series ‘At The Forest’s Edge’ he documents the life of the Kockaturk family, who emigrated from Turkey to Northern Ireland around 17 years ago, now living on the edge of Glenarriff Forest.

“I started focusing mainly on their two teenage sons, Jack and Patrick, who live very masculine lives in their forest environment. I found this interesting because of their age, competitiveness, and closeness. But there is also some degree of tension and separation because they are at very different stages of their lives.”

09/03/2025

Donovan Wylie ‘The Maze’

Between 2002 and 2003 Donovan Wylie spent almost a hundred days photographing inside the Maze prison. Through its history of protests, hunger strikes and escapes, this prison, holding both republican and loyalist prisoners, became synonymous with the Northern Ireland conflict. After the Belfast peace agreement in 1998, inmates were gradually released, but the Maze remained open. Wylie was the only photographer granted official access to the site, and when the demolition of the prison began in 2007, he systematically recorded its demise.

06/03/2025

Megan Doherty .photo

Megan’s series ’Stoned in Melanchol’ was an early inspiration and a huge turning point for me, when I first discovered her work as a teenager. Her dreamy, cinematic portraits of her mates in Derry, allowed me to escape to a distant world.

“The monotony of living in the same, small town all your life, surrounded by the same faces every day takes its toll. When you allow yourself to get lost in film, music, art… it’s disappointing to deal with the reality outside of that.”

“Making work allows me to bring this fictional world to life, to communicate the world I see in my head. Blurring reality and fantasy, essentially.”

Seeing Megan’s work made me realise that I could create that same sense of freedom for myself too.

– Joel

03/03/2025

Adam Patterson

Images from ‘Men and my Daddy’

“The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) is the largest loyalist paramilitary organisation in Northern Ireland. For years it undertook a violent armed struggle against Republican movements and Catholic people. Since the Good Friday Agreement peace initiative was introduced in 1998, the organisation has attempted to reinvent itself and undertake a progressive community-friendly role. This has had some success, with the removal of aggressive murals and UDA members’ engagement in cross-community programs with Republican neighbours who were once enemies. The biggest challenge for loyalist paramilitary organisations remains convincing boys and young men not to follow in their violent footsteps.”

23/02/2025

Badges! Badges! Badges!

Exclusive Fantasy Island badges - available only with presale orders

20/02/2025

Small preview of the foreword for Fantasy Island written by the one and only .exe 💚🕊️

Lovingly translated into Irish by Dr. Art Hughes

09/02/2025

09/09/2024

new zine out soon