Nuala Ní Chonchúir's Blog, page 48

ONE DAY SHORT FICTION COURSE AT THE IWC

My course at Penfest in Carlow tomorrow is full, but I am teaching a one-day short fiction course at the Irish Writers' Centre in Dublin on the 12th of October, for all you story lovers. 10.30am-4.30pm, €80 / €70 (members). We will discuss, read, workshop, write.

See here for bookings and more.

CATHERINE MCNAMARA - GUEST POST

Writer Catherine McNamaraIt's been a week for guests at WWR and today I am very happy to host Catherine McNamara whose début short story collection Pelt and Other Storieswas a semi-finalist in the Hudson Prize and is just published. Catherine grew up in Sydney and has lived in France, Somalia, Belgium, Ghana and Italy. Her stories have been published in Wasafiri, Short Fiction, Wild Cards, a Virago Anthology, A Tale of Three Cities, Tears in the Fence, The View from Here, Pretext and Ether Books.
Catherine’s launch for Pelt and Other Stories will take place at 7pm, Friday 13th September, at the Big Green Bookshop, Unit 1 Brampton Park Road, Wood Green, London N22. She says, 'Do come and celebrate with red wine and raw tales!'


Take it away, Catherine:When I opened the envelope containing the review with my first published short story, I was a young mother with a baby in a basket on the floor of our house in Mogadishu. A long time ago; many lives past. Like most of us, my first published stories were set in my childhood home, Australia. Over the years I’ve published stories set in Somalia, Belgium, Italy, Ghana ... even Mauritius! Are our short stories allowed to follow our lives? And do they risk being lesser because we are visitors wherever we reside?
The short story written about a borrowed land is doubly difficult. Context must be present but it can’t be shouted on the page. The work must be steeped in Otherness, with no showing off of the writer’s intricate knowledge. Action must occur according to the clefts and indentations of the land in question; the light, the pace, the colour of a town. People, it is said, are all the same, but there are differences in the way we walk, we utilise time, we look at the sky, the things that are pressing for us. An authentic work must convey these differences with no tangible effort, and the reader must be swept along towards a shift in knowledge, hardly given a second to consider.. Hang on, isn’t she from Australia? What’s she doing pretending she’s a pregnant Ghanaian woman?
And yet, even pitch-perfect success with this type of ‘ventriloquism’ brings its own risks. Read this harsh criticism of Nam Le’s breathtaking debut collection ‘The Boat’, which gives voice to Colombian gangsters, a New York painter, a Japanese girl, an Anglo-Australian with a sick Mum on the NSW coast:“But while his ventriloquism is impressive, Le’s stories often feel like a set of genre exercises that precisely imitate their sources without transcending them. I once heard an offhand critique of The Boatthat more or less sums up its flaws in one line: ‘that book is the work of an A student.’”  (link: Emmett Stinson, The Sydney Review of Books )
An over-polished and soulless exercise. Quite crushing to read this about a book that I found mesmerising. If Le has failed in this reviewer’s eyes, could that mean it is better to produce a work that plunges towards an interior truth, but remains a little ragged around the edges?
Or worse, should writers stay at home and write only about what they know?
For those of us who are rootless, living in another language or culture, these options will always be tricky. You will be challenged as to your rights over the subject matter. You may be accused of appropriation, inaccuracy, exoticism. And yet the critic above uses a key word in his analysis. It is what every story must do, it must transcendplace, race and form. It must transport and transform that all-important person, the reader.
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Readers can buy Pelt and Other Stories here and the book's blogspot is here. It is also available on Amazon and at the Book Depository.

MÁIRE T. ROBINSON INTERVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

I'm delighted to welcome Máire T. Robinson to the blog today. I first met Máire when I worked at the Western Writers' Centre in Galway, about 10 years ago, and Máire came along to a class. Her talent was obvious then and it's great to see her work between covers now, having followed her writing over the years in various lit mags including Crannóg, Horizon Review and the Chattahoochee Review.

Máire holds a Masters in Writing from NUI, Galway and was nominated for a Hennessy Award in 2012; she was the overall winner of the Doire Press Chapbook Competition 2013. And now Doire have published her début collection of short stories, Your Mixtape Unravels My Heart.
For any Dubs reading, Your Mixtape Unravels My Heart will be launched in The Irish Writers’ Centre tonight, the 11th of September, at 7pm.
I have a spare copy of Máire's fabulous book to give away so if you would like to win it, simply read the interview and leave a comment.

Welcome, Máire. Your début short story collection Your Mixtape Unravels My Heart is just out from Doire Press. Tell me about the book title, which is a unifying one. Are the story titles the titles of real songs?Thanks, Nuala. Yes, the book contains ten short stories and each one is based on a different song. Music is a great source of inspiration for me, as I'm sure it is for many writers. I love how songs have that power to resonate and send you off on creative tangents. I'm also interested in the parallel between creating a mixtape and creating a collection of stories. You're weaving together these elements that shouldn't necessarily fit. They may vary in tone, shape, or emotional pitch. It's very much a labour of love. You're trying to create something that is more than the sum of its parts, that somehow becomes this unified whole.
The cover image and design are great. Can you tell me about that?Certainly. The cover was designed by the very talented Celina Lucey who is based in Cork City. We met a couple of years ago when we were both working in the Irish Writers' Centre. She did some great designs for their posters and brochures at the time and I loved her illustrations. I told her the concept of the book and the image I had in mind, and she designed the cover illustration and found the perfect font to go with it. I'm delighted with how it turned out.  
Why do you write?Tough question. The honest answer? I don't know. I do know that it makes me happy and I can't imagine not doing it, but it is this strange creative impulse that I don't fully understand.
What is your writing process – morning or night – longhand or laptop?There's a lot to be said for routine, but I think it's important not to fetishise your writing process. If you become convinced that you can only write at a certain time of day, or with a particular pen, or in front of a vase of freshly cut petunias, or whatever, you're limiting yourself in what you can get done. My dream scenario would be to spend a few hours writing in the morning, then edit for a couple of hours in the afternoon. But I work full-time, so that's not happening. I try to make the most of the time I do have, whether it's writing at weekends, popping into the library on my lunch break for a spot of stealth scribbling, or ignoring the views on bus or train journeys in favour of using that time to make up people who don't exist.   
Who is the writer you most admire?Margaret Atwood. I remember reading Cat's Eye in my early twenties and being blown away. Everything I've read by her since has never disappointed. Her prose style is utterly compelling. It manages to be fiercely intelligent, yet deeply funny. It's masterful and so, so enjoyable to read. I also love that she has this amazing social conscience, yet her work is never polemical. Her non-fiction is fantastic too. Her book Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing is one I keep returning to. 
Who is your favourite woman writer?I love Flannery O' Connor's short stories. In terms of novels, I think Molly Keane's Good Behaviour is criminally underrated. And I recently read Elif Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul and loved it, so I definitely want to read more of her work.
Which short story would you like to see on the Leaving Cert?It would need to be something students would enjoy, that speaks about contemporary Ireland, but also has a timeless quality (because once they add it to the syllabus, it'll probably languish there for quite some time). Something by Kevin Barry would probably fit the bill – linguistically inventive, funny, and sharp.  
What is your favourite bookshop? Powells in Portland, Oregon. It's book heaven. It's this huge space that takes up an entire block and you get this colour-coded map when you go in. I would literally live there if I could, curled up on a shelf like Yumiko Readman from “Read or Die”.
What one piece of advice would you offer beginning writers?Be kind to yourself. You will write utter rubbish and that's okay – you're perfecting a craft. It won't be perfect, nor is it supposed to be. The main thing is to actually write. I read this little mantra somewhere and it's stuck with me: You can fix a bad page, but you can't fix a blank page.
What are you working on now? Any plans to write a novel?I'm currently working on the second draft of my first novel. It's set in contemporary Galway city and features an aspiring tattoo artist and a historian who researches sheela-na-gigs. I'd describe it as a coming-of-age story about two people in their late-twenties who should have their lives figured out, but don't.

Noelle Vial Tyrone Guthrie Centre Poetry Bursary

Noelle VialThe 13th Annual Donegal Bay and Blue Stacks Festival is celebrating the memory of Killybegs poet Noelle Vial with the creation of a poetry bursary in her name. The bursary, which is being offered in association with members of the poet's family, will take the form of a week-long stay at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Newbliss, County Monaghan, and will be known as the Noelle Vial Tyrone Guthrie Centre Poetry Bursary.
The bursary is aimed at an emerging poet, writing in English or Irish or both, who will be at a particular point in the development of their writing careers. That is, their work will already have been featured in a selection of established poetry publications, magazines, anthologies, etc., and they will now be at the point of preparing a debut or a second collection for submission to publishers. The sojourn at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre is designed to provide them with the time and space to refine and collate their work. The bursary is open to poets living and working in Donegal, as well as to Donegal-born writers who may currently be based outside the county.

Poets wishing to be considered for the bursary are invited to submit 6 to 10 samples of recent work, their CV which will include a record of publication of work to date, and an Artist's Statement of not more than 200 words, outlining how and why a stay at the Tyrine Guthrie Centre would assist their development as a writer.

Submissions should be forwarded to the Noelle Vial Tyrone Guthrie Centre Poetry Bursary, Donegal Bay and Blue Stacks Festival, c/o Donegal County Library, Rosemount, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, no later than 5.00pm on Wednesday 18th September 2013. Submissions may also be emailed to traolach@donegalcoco.ie.

The winner of the inaugural Noelle Vial Tyrone Guthrie Centre Poetry Bursary will be announced on Friday 27th September 2013.

AILEEN ARMSTRONG - GUEST POST

Writer Aileen ArmstrongHere's something to brighten up your Monday: début writer Aileen Armstrong at the blog today, with a guest post entitled 'The Roots of Preoccupations'. Aileen's first book, a linked short story collection called End of Days, has just been published by the fabulous Doire Press who are based in Connemara, County Galway.

The book will be launched on Saturday the 14th September by Declan Meade of The Stinging Fly at Galway Arts Centre at 1pm. Aileen, who grew up in Sligo, now lives in Galway. Her writing has appeared in Galway Stories, the Stinging Fly, and Long Story, Short. She holds a MA in Writing from NUI Galway.

If you can't wait 'til Saturday to read it, buy the book here now.


The Roots of Preoccupations
Aileen Armstrong

When I was twenty, I spent an Erasmus year at university in the south of France. Back in those days, I didn’t know any writers, and I had already (and prematurely, as it turned out) abandoned any attempt at writing creatively myself.  Even so, it seemed to me that Erasmus years were the stuff of fiction-makers’ dreams. All of that youth and uncertainty, the language mash-up, the cultural pleasures and the cultural absurdities. Somebody should write a novel about Erasmus students, I thought. Somebody, somewhere, should mine this fount.

I took a class, in my French university, that would focus on the American short story. The class was taught in English, and only two authors were examined: Raymond Carver and Hermann Melville.  My feelings about Carver are for another day. But via Melville’s short story collection The Piazza Tales I was introduced to Bartleby the Scrivener, and anyone who has encountered Bartleby won’t forget him. Bartleby, a pallid notary taken on by a Wall Street lawyer, performs his documentation tasks admirably at first. It’s not long, however, before he is trying the patience of his colleagues and his employer. To repeated injunctions to perform office duties, or do anything at all, he has but one mysterious, minimalistic response:  ‘I would prefer not to.’ Eventually, the lawyer discovers that Bartleby has been sleeping in the office – that he does not, in fact, ever leave the office, but continues to occupy its space with his ‘passive resistance.’

In later years, after graduation, I worked for a long time in an office not unlike Bartleby’s, doing work that was not unlike Bartelby’s. And often, when I was working alone well into the evening, chasing a deadline, I would be struck by the same kind of melancholy a first reading of Bartleby invites. It seems to me that the stories we read earliest – or perhaps the ones we read best – do this to us. We hardly notice it, but their patterns or images become settled in us. They become part of our sensory make-up.

I didn’t write that novel. And maybe I didn’t exactly write short stories either, since the pieces in my collection – End of Days, Doire Press – are lightly linked, meant for reading in sequence. Still, in one of them, the title story, an Erasmus student spends Christmas alone in her flat aware of, but removed from – possibly even passively resisting – the festivities that are taking place in the busy bar on the ground floor of her building. And it’s only now that I’m writing this that I can see where the roots of my preoccupation – with solitary souls in communal buildings? – potentially lies, and I’m amazed, as I often am, at how much time I seem to need to process things.

That class on American short fiction was a bit of a disaster, truth be told. But if I got nothing else from it, I still got Bartleby. He was more than enough.

Reading with Gerard Stembridge & Kevin Curran - IWC

Gerry Stembridge by Anto Kane

Gerry Stembridge and Kevin Curran will read at the Irish Writers' Centre tomorrow,  Saturday 7th September at 1.00pm
Gerard Stembridge’s work as screenwriter and novelist is well known to Irish audiences. His scripting of ‘Ordinary Decent Criminal’ (starring Kevin Spacey) set the bar for Irish screenwriters. Although Gerry is perhaps even more renowned for his broadcast work, in particular for much-loved Scrap Saturday, co-written with the late Dermot Morgan. His fourth novel The Effect of Her (Old Street Publishing) has been met with much acclaim. In it he relates, in nonfictionalised detail, the social and political events that rocked Ireland in the 1970s.
 Kevin's debut novel Beatsploitation which explores a changed Dublin powerfully captures the energy, wit and pathos of contemporary Dublin society, giving voice to a cynical, disillusioned generation, caught between the tired values of the old and the uncertainty of the new.
Both men will read and talk about the novel as a document of a generation and how writing can shine a light on society's values.

DAVY BYRNES AWARD 2014

The Stinging Fly has just confirmed the return of the Davy Byrnes Award in 2014 with three wonderful judges: Anne Enright (the 2004 winner), Yiyun Li and Jon McGregor. There's €15,000 for the best short story, and five runners-up will receive €1000. Closing date is Monday February 3, 2014. €10 entry fee. A full set of rules and entry forms will be made available in advance of the competition being open for entries in December. The competition is open to Irish citizens and to residents of the thirty-two counties. Entries must consist of a previously unpublished short story written in English. The maximum word count is 15,000 words, no minimum. Only one story per entrant. The six short-listed writers will be announced in late May/early June 2014 and the overall winner announced in June 2014.Time to start writing...

LOVELY POST THROUGH MY LETTERBOX

An eclectic pile of books and stuff fell through my letterbox yesterday. (Aside: I am convinced my postman hoards my post and delivers it in vast piles or not at all...) Anyway, I got two copies of a Russian lit journal in which poems of mine are translated by Андрей Сеньков (Andrei, to me). One is for Afric McGlinchey, who is also featured.


I also received two new beautifully designed Doire Press short story collections: Máire T. Robinson's Your Mixtape Unravels My Heart and Aileen Armstrong's End of Days. Both writers will feature on this blog shortly. I'll be interviewing Máire and giving away a copy of her wonderful collection and Aileen will be guest-blogging about her book. Please do stop by to support these two new women writers with their début books - exciting times for them and us.

Today the postman brought Valerie Trueblood's new short story collection Search Party - whoop! - and the new edition of The Moth . The Moth is soooo pretty, I could just gaze at it all day.

LONDON MAGAZINE SHORT STORY COMP

The London Magazine has announced its second short story competition. Entries accepted from now to the 31st of October.
Winner receives £500 and will also be printed in the magazine and online. Second and third place prizes are £300 and £200 and will be featured on their website.
Word count: up to 4,000 (but no flash). Entry fee: £10 per short story. Postal and email entries accepted. Click here for more.

WOW! AWARD 2013

The annual WOW Award admins have appointed the judges for the 2013 award. Elizabeth Reapy is the judge for fiction and Knute Skinner is the judge for poetry.
   Elizabeth (EM) Reapy is an Irish writer. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University, Belfast, edits wordlegs.com and is the director of Shore Writers’ Festival in Enniscrone. She compiled and edited 30 under 30: A Selection of Short Fiction by Thirty Young Irish Writers. In 2013 she was selected as the Irish representative for PEN International’s New Voices Award, where she made the long-list of 6 writers.
Knute Skinner was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but now lives in Co. Clare, Ireland. His collection, Fifty Years: Poems 1957-2007, from Salmon, contained new work along with work taken from thirteen previous books. The Other Shoe won the 2004-2005 Pavement Saw Chapbook Award. A memoir, Help Me to a Getaway, was published by Salmon in March 2010. A new book of poems, Concerned Attentions, was published by Salmon in September 2013.
The WOW! Award has €2100 in prize money plus publication. Stories up to 3000 words. Poems up to 100 lines. Closing date: Thursday October 31st 2013. Full details here.