Nuala Ní Chonchúir's Blog, page 38

Bad advice to writers

Bad advice given to ten Irish writers. Some po-faced, some funny, some just plain wrong. Here.

Novel cover - final

I got the final cover for my novel which comes out on 7th April from New Island. I love it! I am also thrilled with Gerard Stembridge's blurb which, in its entirety, reads: 'The reader will be seduced by the intimacy and sensuality of this novel and the delicate grief that haunts its pages. Best of all, in a literary world of dazzling but shallow fiction, Nuala Ní Chonchúir's characters and their relationships have about them that most precious and elusive quality: the ring of truth.'

Estudios Irlandeses interview

I was interviewed in May 2013 by academic Marisol Morales at the Irish Studies Conference in Cacéres in Spain. A transcript of that interview is now published in Estudios Irlandeses and can be read here.

Wales Arts Review reviews *Of Dublin and Other Fictions*

The Wales Arts Review has a fab review of Of Dublin and Other Fictions in their new issue. Big thanks to reviewer John Lavin. '...what is so extremely impressive about Ní Chonchúir’s use of the flash fiction form is that, time and time again, she uses it to deliver the same epiphanic punch that can be found in the best of her short stories and poems.' The rest is here.

SNEAK PREVIEW FOR TONIGHT'S GROUP 8 OPENING

Group 8 launch their fifth annual exhibition of art and writing, After Garbally, TONIGHT Friday the 14th March at 7pm in The Regency Room in Hayden’s Hotel, Ballinasloe. The exhibition continues until the 17th of March, daily from 11am to 6pm, including Saint Patrick’s Day.

Fr Dan O'Donovan of Garbally will open the exhibition tonight and all are welcome to enjoy wine, food, art, readings, and music from Johnny Johnston and Liam Loughrey.

We set up the exhib yesterday so here are a few preview pics. See you at 7pm!
Joyce Little preparing her blackboards for her installation Tommy Campbell, up a ladder as usual Walter Coughlan figuring out how best to hang his ceramics Detail from Joyce Litte's school-themed installation Group cake break: it was Tommy's birthday yesterday Brendan Grealy and Úna Spain, contemplating walls John Soden and Grellan Ganly, taking a break Tommy hanging John's work

CHATTAHOOCHEE REVIEW - PIECE ON 'OF DUBLIN'

The Chattahoochee Review's blog, The Hooch , has this really cute piece from contributing editor Gregg Murray about my chapbook of flash, Of Dublin and Other Fictions.
A Story Concerning Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s Of Dublin and Other FictionsGregg Murray

So I’m sharing a cab with this impecunious muzzle who says he’s a writer. Oh, and he is an impatient reader who likes surprises, le mot juste, and the sentences of Flann O’Brien. I like stories—who doesn’t?—but I won’t read flagellant prose to get it. I’ll take the movie version after a sixer of the Beast if I’m just in it to find out what happens next. Well, this guy giggles into his patchwork mittens, and we’re getting on pretty good, until the cabbie says, “So it’s like that” and starts quoting this jaw-dropping stuff we’ve never heard of.
“There you saw Nicholas’s lorry, on its side, spilling a sea of fish onto the tarmac. The fish were grey and doll-eyed and the road was completely blocked.”
“Doll-eyed.”
“I know,” he says in wonder. “That’s the word it had to be.” And we’re just listening. They’re all prose poems obviously, and it’s mythical in one breath and in the next it’s as real as an insult. Anyway, he just keeps after it, describing worlds like ours but with the blade of truth stuck in their brawny trunks. “Pikes, muskets, cannon, horses, and men, men, men. Piled around the fields of Aughrim. Where before there was ragwort and bog pimpernel, there was gore.”
And we’re huddled against each other in the back, me and this guy I wouldn’t know from Adam. Now, “She is a tree, this branch-haired woman with a trunk body and bark cloak. Birds nestle in her hair. At laying time, Treewoman opens her bellydoor and a partridge flies in.” He’s telling us about this “Treedaughter” in a micro-poetry bildungsroman, replete with moral, and then he steers into the Café de la Gare and is suddenly assuming the persona of Vincent van Gogh with a razor-blade. And then it’s “Jesus of Dublin” and “egglore” and fog making water “drip like tears from the trees.” Amazing.
Well, long story short. The cabbie’s getting all worked up and in a trance and crashes the cab, and so we all three die and our fishdead bodies in the streetlit road have this phosphorescent sheen on them like we’re in the Bible or something.
*all text inside quotation are from Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s Of Dublin and Other Fictions

WOMEN WRITERS ON WOMEN WRITERS

Valerie TruebloodFor International Women's Day on Saturday, New Island Books asked some of its women writers to talk about the women writers they love. The feature is here.

These were my picks (I forgot to mention Emily D. And Lorrie Moore. And so many more. We were only allowed five...)

Flannery O’Connor: I love Flannery for her humour, colloquial language and violence. I love her flawed, petty characters and the mad things they say.

Anne Enright: Anne is a genius at depicting relationships, broken and flawed. She has a truly fresh way of exploring what it means to be Irish.

Emma Donoghue: I admire her intelligence, exuberant use of language and broad subject matter. You never know what you’re going to get with Emma, in terms of theme or setting, and that’s cool.

Valerie Trueblood: I discovered Valerie through the Cork Short Story Festival. Her stories are so humane and beautifully written, and she knows how to enter and exit in exactly the right place.

Edna O’Brien: Brave Edna, to whom ‘language is sacred.’ I love her; I’ve probably been reading her longer than any other writer. She is so sincere, so subtly funny. Someone rightly said, ‘If we didn’t have Edna O’Brien, we’d have to invent her.’

PUBLISHING DAY - AFTERS

I've posted some thoughts after the Publishing Day at the Irish Writers' Centre on Saturday at the Italo-Irish Literature Exchange blog here.

WIPS AND THE WRITING PROCESS - A BLOG TOUR Q & A

The Penguin Foundation on Phillip Island in Victoria saves the lives of penguins - by putting them in jumpersThanks to novelist Lia Mills who has passed the 2014 writers’ Q&A blog-tour torch to me. The idea is that you answer three questions about your work, then ask the same questions of another writer whose work you’re interested in, and they pass it on to another writer… and keep it moving.

What am I working on?

I am totally head-cabbaged at the moment because I am working on two main things and tons of other side things. The two main things are:

Novel 2: The Closet of Savage Mementos (out in April from New Island)

I did final proofs this week (so exciting to see the book at this stage). I made 50 changes (mostly small things like removing repeated words. How they are still in there is beyond me; I think I could edit forever and not find all those niggly things.) I also finalised the review quotes for the beginning of the book and proofed the book club questionnaire for the back of the book. All important and time consuming work. Very enjoyable though. And I am compiling my invite list for my Dublin launch - pencil in Tuesday 15th April in The Gutter!

Novel 3: Miss Emily (out 2015 from Penguin USA and Penguin Canada)

I am rewriting the book with the aid of suggestions from my two editors in Penguin. So I am returning to my research notes and books to verify things. I am also having to think more deeply on Emily Dickinson's relationships and how she is the way she is. I am locking down permissions for the Dickinson poems quoted in the book. Penguin have LONG lead times so my deadline is 1st April for this draft. I will get it to them on 31st March so as not to be subbing on April Fool's Day!

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

Hmmm, what a question. What am I supposed to say?! Erm, it's different in that I bring my own sensibilities to it, I suppose. My passions and obsessions. I am interested in the body and lovers so that tends to turn up a lot. I don't shy away from sex scenes (I am very well thought of among a certain band of older men of my acquaintance! My mother is not so pleased...)

How does my writing process work?

Process. What does it even mean? I try to write three hours a day five days a week, basically. On my laptop at my desk in my bedroom. Mornings, when the kids are out. I keep A5 legal pads everywhere and I jot things on them - quotes, sentences, words, ideas. Once the jotted bits are put into the work, I throw the bits of paper away. I keep a small notebook in my handbag for notes on the fly. I build my novels from notes, I don't plot or plan, I just throw myself in and see what will happen. I don't necessarily write the book in a linear way either, I write forward and back.

I am now passing this on to writer Alison Wells, who will post her answers to the Q&A on the 24th March.

PUBLISHING DAY AT THE IWC

Publishing Day on Fiction & Poetry - this Saturday!
The Irish Writers' Centre is hosting a special Publishing Day focusing on poetry and fiction on the 8th March. The day is aimed at emerging, unpublished writers who are keen to know the inside track on publishing and how publishers select work.

10.00-10.30: Registration
10.30-11.20: Michael McLoughlin, Managing Director of Penguin Ireland, will give his insights on publishing fiction.
11.20-12.10: Sallyanne Sweeney, a director at Mulcahy Associates Literary Agents in London will share her expertise on what an agent looks for in signing a new writer.
12.10-12.20: Quick tea/coffee break.
12.20-1.10: Maureen Kennelly, Director of Poetry Ireland, and Peter Fallon of The Gallery Press will cover a number of topics relating to poetry publishing.
1.10-2.10: Lunch
2.10-4.15: Author, editor and Novel Fair judge Anthony Glavin will moderate and contribute to a panel of six published authors working in a range of forms and genres including: Mia Gallagher, Sean Hardie, Liz McManus, Noel Monahan, Nuala Ní Chonchúir and William Wall.

There will be a generous amount of Q&A time built into each of the sessions.

For more information and for booking, click here.