Nuala Ní Chonchúir's Blog, page 55

I'M WITH FRANCIS SCOTT ON THIS ONE

F. Scott Fitzgerald F. Scott Fitzgerald’s didn't like to discuss the book he was working on. In a 1940 letter to his daughter Scottie, he said: 'I think it’s a pretty good rule not to tell what a thing is about until it’s finished. If you do you always seem to lose some of it. It never quite belongs to you so much again.' I agree wholeheartedly with this; I can't abide it when people ask me about what I am working on. I just don't want to say.

Read more of Fitzgerald’s thoughts on writing here.

I am fizzing waiting for Baz Luhrmann's movie of The Great Gatsby. I can't wait. I've loved Fitzgerald's work since I was a kid and I am certainly not averse to a screenful of Leo DiCaprio.

I re-read The Great Gatsby last year to gear up for the film coming out. I was in Croatia while reading it so West Egg in the book is now tied in my mind with a hot, strawberry scented Zagreb. It is an exquisite novel; such a great story of obsession, delivered in sentence after gorgeous sentence:

'They were careless people, Tom and Daisy; they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.’ 

Oh, yeah! Bring it on!

Q and A about The Stinging Fly

Shane Breslin, of the Irish Writing Blog, Q&As me about my guest editorship at The Stinging Fly magazine here.

THE FABER ANTHOLOGY LANDS

Town & Country , the new Faber anthology of Irish Short Stories, edited by Kevin BarryLook what arrived this morning - oh, the excitement!! I think I will abandon the NIP today in favour of reading this. The titles of the stories alone have me zinging: 'Godīgums' by Keith Ridgway (it means 'straightforwardness/integrity' in Latvian); 'The Second-Best Bar in Cadiz' (Andrew Meehan); 'Brimstone Butterfly' (Des Hogan); 'Saturday, Boring' (Lisa McInerney).

Kevin Barry's introduction to the anthology is suitably brilliant and interesting. A flavour:

'...at any given moment, it seems, there are ten thousand maniacs battering their laptops with caffeinated fingers, and stories are scrawled onto the backs of beer mats, or pricked out in blood on the pale skin of the page.'

'A great story can take all the air out of a room.'

'A great story can make you loosen your collar.'

'It was with a sense of cackling glee that I sent this book to its publisher...The Irish story is changing and is pulsing with great, mad and rude new energies.'

Town and Country will be out 6th June. You can pre-order it here.

The Dublin launch takes place at the Faber Social at the Dublin Writers' Festival in Smock Alley Theatre (change of venue to Smock Alley because of demand!), Saturday 25th May, 6pm. Admission: €10/€8. I'll be reading at it along with fellow writers Patrick McCabe, Paul Murray, Eimear Ryan and Michael Harding. Buy your ticket here.

ALAN McMONAGLE INTERVIEW

I'm delighted to welcome writer and friend Alan McMonagle to WWR today to celebrate the publication of his new short story collection, Psychotic Episodes, by Arlen House.

Alan is a poet, playwright and short fiction writer living in Galway. He has received awards for his work from the Professional Artists’ Retreat in Yaddo (New York), the Fundación Valparaiso (Spain), the Banff Centre for Creativity (Canada) and the Arts Council of Ireland. He has contributed stories to many journals in Ireland and North America including The Adirondack Review, The Valparaiso Fiction Review, Natural Bridge, Grain, Prairie Fire, Southword and The Stinging Fly.
Liar Liar, his first collection of stories appeared in 2008 (Wordsonthestreet) and was longlisted for the 2009 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. The title story from his second collection, Psychotic Episodes, (Arlen House, April 2013) was nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize.
Alan McMonagle at the launch of Psychotic Episodes, Cúirt 2013, GalwayHi Alan and welcome to WWR. You said in interview, regarding short stories, ‘Stories are revelations, discoveries, confessions, little explosions. They attempt to be of reality and, at the same time, to stretch reality.’ Is the short story your natural 'home'? Or how do you see yourself as a writer?
Because I am a restless (as well as a spontaneous) writer my 'natural' home as you put it, Nuala, is wherever my energies are presently taking me. I flit anxiously and eagerly from form to form, and lengthy spells can pass before anything nudges its tentative way across the finish line. For me, it is a contradictory, mysterious, revelatory occupation - I have completed stories in one sitting and have yet to finish poems started years ago.
Essentially, in my writing I like moving from what I know (which isn't very much) and taking it towards what I don't know (which is vast). This is a highwire act. And the wire is invisible! So, sometimes I fail (fall!) and I admit this. So I start again and next time make sure I fail (fall!) better.
I know you count William Gay as a favourite writer. Tell us why that is and which other writers do you count as favourite short fiction writers and why?

William Gay achieved success at quite a late stage in his life. His writing takes my breath away. It is beautiful and stark and lyrical. He trips a switch, and fire and brimstone arrive. He has a hinterland. He knows twisted lives, he has wonderful comic timing, he writes some of the sharpest dialogue I've read. I recommend his collection I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down.
I also like the Russian Sergei Dovlatov. He tried for years to get out of Russia. A couple of years after he managed to get to America he discovered in a disused closet the suitcase he had taken with him. Inside the luggage holder were twelve items he had deemed important enough to take with him, and each of the dozen stories in his collection The Suitcase reveals how he came to be in possession of each item. I so enjoy his mordant humour. His matter-of-fact style. The absurdity and chaos of the world as he experienced it.
I will always have a place on my shelf for the Armenian William Saroyan. For his take on childhood. The confusion. The soon-to-be lost innocence. The human comedy of it all.
I also enjoy Isaac Singer, Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor, Grace Paley, Amy Hempel, Lorrie Moore, Etgar Keret, Roberto Bolaño, Carson McCullers, Katherine Anne Porter, and Bruno Schulz.
What story do you love? (You know the one that begs to be re-read over and over.)

Impossible to confine it to one.
Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff. Six pages. An entire life packed into six pages. A brilliant set-up. An inconceivable continuation. A mesmerising final image. And, of course, it's about language and usage, how life can defeat a man, even a man so initially enthusiastic about the possibilities of existence.
In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried by Amy Hempel. This story proves that humour and tragedy co-exist...
Araby from Dubliners. For the language. For the concision. For the discovery the boy makes at the exotic market that gives the story its name. A painful discovery, something you would not necessarily wish upon one so young, but a valid discovery nevertheless.
Others stories I regularly return to include The Gospel According To Mark by Jorge Luis Borges; Symbols and Signs by Vladimir Nabokov; When We Were Nearly Young by Mavis Gallant; Emergency by Denis Johnson; The Colonel Says I Love You by Sergei Dovlatov; Last Night by James Salter (I think you would love this story, Nuala).
I know it and I do love it; I love its slant view. Salter is a genius.You write long and short fiction, as well as poetry. Do you find a crossover of themes between them all? Or does each stand alone for you?

Well, a poem is a poem; a story is a story; and until it lands on the stage a piece of drama conveys purely through dialogue (spoken and unspoken). That said, because my stories contain a lot of dialogue I often finish a story and am asking myself can it be adapted. (I have adapted two recent stories into radio plays, for example.) Also, I try to be brief and I suppose this is partly how the poems arrive. Cutting lines I find more enjoyable than accumulating paragraphs (which is why my longer fiction is currently resting in an offshore drawer!) Ultimately, it is story I am attracted to, and how story arrives will usually influence its final shape - be it short  fiction, poem,  or piece of drama. Naturally, thematic considerations overlap, and more intriguingly perhaps, also the elements - narrative, dialogue, imagery, tone, structure and so on.
Humour is important to you as a writer. Are you drawn to funny work as a reader?

I try to use humour to bring something unfunny into relief. I don't always succeed, but when I do, it is very satisfying. Woody Allen says comedy equals tragedy plus time. I think humour and tragedy run together, co-exist. Beckett (again) was probably the writer most attuned to this. To paraphrase his own words, 'nothing matters, so everything matters.' Also, I think it was Chekhov who said happy people write unhappy stories and unhappy people write happy stories. Of course somehow blending these polar elements - the humorous and the tragic - is the ideal. Lorrie Moore is great at this. Her stories read: Joke, Joke, Joke, Joke, Joke, then comes the punch in the soul.
You have travelled a lot in South America and Europe. Do these travels influence your  writing?

Travels influence my reading. The Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano. The Chileno Roberto Bolaño. The Russian Sergei Dovlatov. The brilliant Pole Ryszard Kapuscinski. Next up for me is the Bulgarian Aleko Konstantinov and the Albanian Luan Starova.
Travelling hasn't influence my writing yet because I come with a delay mechanism! However, someone close to me has thrown down the gauntlet and suggested I put together a collection set completely outside Ireland. Knowing myself, I'll probably begin at the airport...
You hold an MA in Writing from NUI Galway. Do you think it is a useful experience and/or qualification?

The course is great for focus and discipline. A dream come true if you like to flit from one form to another. You can experiment. It's great for making like-minded friends. You will quickly feel part of a community. The qualification will provide you with credentials for future earning (teaching, editing, proofreading, and so forth) - because  if there is one definite in life it is that you are not going to make money from the writing that is part of your soul. 
What is your writing process – morning or night; longhand or laptop? Are you a notebook user?

I tend to write in the morning and in the evening. I am not productive during afternoons. I like to start longhand. If it's 'firm' I will get to the laptop. I have a beautiful collection of notebooks from everywhere that I am terrified to spoil with clumsy scrawl. A writing friend of mine writes on whatever it is she has to hand - beer mat, napkin, loaf wrapper blowing in the wind. She impales these loose jottings on a spike file and every weekend she 'clears out' what she has accumulated, decides what is useful. This is a good system, I think.
What advice would you offer beginning writers?

You must persevere. Writing is a minority sport. It is a game you lose almost all the time. Read as widely as you can. Find your tuning forks. And re-read these. If you have been spoonfed the principles of good writing do not be afraid to stray from them - especially if this is where your energies are taking you. If you are getting something out of what you have written, there is a good chance someone else will. Writing is an act of faith. And so, ultimately, it is its own reward. Remember, every day is the first day.
Readers, you can read more about Alan and his upcoming readings, events etc. at his website here and you can buy Psychotic Episodes online or in person at Kennys and other good book shops.

GUEST FICTION EDITOR - STINGING FLY

I am thrilled to be able to announce that I will be guest fiction editor for the spring 2014 issue of super lit mag The Stinging Fly. I am particularly interested in receiving flash fiction/short-shorts up to 500 words. Stories to be submitted in June. More details in this link.

THE BOAT DREAM

I dreamt last night that I was the skipper of a boat (this was my job). I had no training but I was doing OK, sailing along, with a full load of passengers. Until I went over a small waterfall and wondered, as the boat fell, if we would sink. We didn't. Then I was sailing around trying to find a pier or jetty, but it had been replaced by a dump, so I couldn't dock. The passengers were annoyed and I felt terrible. It was made clear to me that I would shortly be fired.

I dream vividly, every night, usually such nonsensical stuff that it can't have been inspired by anything real, anything I have seen or heard. So, mostly I would see my dreams as being unanalysable. But this one - The Boat - well, it strikes me that this is me writing my NIP (Novel #3).

I am in charge of a boat/novel but I don't feel like I'm in charge. The boat/plot regularly takes unexpected nosedives but it recovers. The passengers/characters are disgruntled; I am not doing right by them. I am two thirds of the way into the journey, so I am now searching for a dock/ending. Luckily, the only person who can fire me is me, so that part won't be happening, but, I guess, the threat of it is always there. Because even when the novel is finished, who is to say it will float at all?

In less unsettling news I signed the contract for Novel #2 yesterday and it will be out spring 2014. Title TBC as neither I nor my editor at New Island are particulalry attached to Highland. Watch this space :)

And, now, I must get back to my little boat and hope that all goes well on today's sail.

NFFD CALL FOR SUBS - ANTHOLOGY

National Flash-Fiction Day are looking for stories up to 500 words by May 17th for this year's anthology:

This year we are looking for stories which take their place in the larger web of art. So we are looking for pieces which have been inspired by another work - a book, story, poem, painting, photograph, piece of music, or anything else artistic. It can be a direct relationship, or a loose one, an homage or a tangential glance which sparks the muse. We don't mind the connection, we just want to see how other works of art feed into your writing.

Guidelines:

Word count: 500 word maximum.

Deadline: Midnight GMT on Friday 17th May 2013.

Location: Submissions are welcome world-wide, with no restriction.

Submissions: Please paste your stories into the body of an email and send to nffdanthology@gmail.com. Maximum of 2 stories per writer, and please send them in the same email.

Small Print: No simultaneous submisions or previously published work, please. However, work previously posted on your own blog or website is fine.
We will not consider any work which is any way offensive or discriminatory.

There will be a fast turn-around on this anthology, in order to get it out in time for the Day, so you should hear back promptly, but if you have any queries or questions, please contact us through our general email address, rather than the anthology one.

This year's anthology will be edited by Calum Kerr and Holly Howitt. The two editors will read all the submissions and draw up their 'wish list' before wrangling endlessly over which ones make the final cut.

JUNO'S LITERARY WIN

I keep meaning to blog about this and I keep forgetting. I'm supposed to be writing an essay at the moment but ... let it suffice to say, I am not in the mood.

Anyway, my daughter Juno (aged 3) was highly commended in a recent competition run by Imaginosity, the Dublin Children's Museum, called 'What's the Story?' It is great to see creativity being actively encouraged in children - fair play to Imaginosity.

So I thought I'd post her picture/story. Needless to say she is three so she can't write. She dictated the story to me and I typed it up.

Juno is obsessed with mermaids, death and pink things, as you will see. (Are all the daughters of feminists obsessed with pink?!) Here is the text in case it is not readable on the picture:

'Once upon a time there was a mermaid. She had green hair and a green tail and pink lipstick. She found her prince lying on the beach. Then she swimmed into the sea and she met her friends again. She telled them she saved her prince. She ate teeny weeny little kind of fish that were red. And she ate some shark. And chicken. The mermaid fell off a rock and hurt her arm; she tried to get the cut off and couldn’t. Then she got dead. Then she got alive again and married the prince. And that’s all.
Juno!

CÚIRT 2013 - AFTERS

So, for me, Cúirt is over for another year. I'm partly sad, partly glad - recovery can begin. Cúirt is a very social festival and I'm not used to the late nights, but they are great fun, of course.

Actor reading Julian Gough's story in St Nicholas'sI started my Cúirt at Vincent Woods interview with Edna O'Brien. It was too dark in the Town Hall theatre to take notes but the interview will actually be broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 on Arts Tonight tomorrow the 29th April, at 10pm. Vincent is a good, warm interviewer and Edna is a very fluent speaker; she spoke about her life and particularly the influence of her homeplace and family in Co. Clare on her writing. She was charming, regal, witty.

I am writing an essay on her at the moment for a plenary I am giving at the AEDEI conference in Spain next month, so I have been immersed in Edna interviews lately online etc. I didn't learn anything new on Thursday night but it is always a pleasure to listen to her. Did somebody once say that if we didn't have Edna O'Brien we would have to invent her? She is our grand dame of letters, for sure.

Crowd at Galway Stories literary walk/reading, St Nicholas'sThe next event I attended was the Arena live recording at the Nun's Island Theatre; it was broadcast Friday evening and you can listen to it here for a week or so. There was no way of knowing who was going to feature and I was thrilled when I got there to find that two of the guests were Paula Meehan and Sharon Olds, two of my favourite poets/women. Seán Rocks asked about the American-Irish poetic relationship. Paula said that 'from Emily Dickinson to Bob Dylan' American poetry has always provided 'huge nourishment' to Irish poets. She said she particularly likes Alicia Ostriker.

Sharon said that for her Irish poetry is both 'an ancestor from the past and a sister-brother from the present'. She also said 'Poetry is about going below while singing above.' I love that. Seán asked her about the tag 'confessional'; Sharon said she feels her poems are more 'accusational'. She said, 'No one would choose to be in the family of a family poet' and that when she writes she is 'resting' from herself. She also said that when she edits what she has written she 'tries to take out half of the adjectives and a third of the self pity.'

A local, sweet-voiced singer, Stacey Nolan, sang two songs at the Arena event. She may be Galway's answer to Gillian Welch. Writer and film-maker Conor Montague read from his story 'Eat the Swans' which features in the new Galway Stories anthology from Doire Press - a visceral, shocking story that will not suit the squeamish reader/listener.
Juno McLoughlin at Alan McMonagle's book launch, Town Hall TheatreFrom there we went directly to the launch of the Galway Stories anthology which took the form of a literary walk with stop-offs for readings. It rained - of course - but Jim Mullarkey entertained a huge crowd outside McCambridge's; an actor read from Julian Gough's story in Saint Nicholas's Cathedral; Olaf Tyransen did the honours outside Neachtain's Pub, and finally we all piled into Monroe's Tavern where Kernan Andrews from the Galway Advertiser did the official launch. Congrats to Lisa Frank and John Walsh of Doire Press for a great idea, well executed.

Later I went to Paula Meehan and Sharon Olds's excellent reading at the Town Hall. They are a great poetry pairing and Paula was in fine, lively reading form. Sharon has a more subdued style in comparison but she is utterly convincing and sincere. It was a great evening. Down to the festival club after in the Meyrick Hotel where I enjoyed chatting to the very affable American writer Ben Marcus, as well as Mary Costello, Declan Meade, and many others.

Alan McMonagle signing Psychotic EpisodesMidday on Saturday saw my fellow member of The Peers, Alan McMonagle's, launch. Psychotic Episodes is his second short story collection and it comes from the inimitable Arlen House. Pat McMahon did the launch speech and also being launched was Aideen Henry's newest book, Hugging Thistles.

We went back to our hotel for a swim/rest and later for a walk on the prom in Salthill, where I used to bring my kids a lot when I lived in the city. My parents brought us on holidays there in the 70s and 80s. A special place. Then I went to Ron Rash and Claire Keegan at the Town Hall. Burning Bright, Ron's Frank O'Connor Award winning collection, is one of my all-time favourites. He read a harrowing drowning story from the new collection. In the Q&A he said that each story and novel of his is sparked by an image. He then follows that image, believing it will lead him to the story (he does not plan - yay!)

Salthill!Claire Keegan read from Foster, that wonderful section where the child is brought home from a wake by an inquisitive neighbour. Claire is an original thinker which always comes across in her Q&A responses - she is unpredictable, sparky, interesting. There is never a rehearsed, sound-bytey quality to her answers. She is our Edna of the future but in her own particular maverick way.

I spent the evening in the Meyrick again enjoying the great conversation of Ron Rash (yes!), the lovely Richard Burns of Nantucket (a Cúirt stalwart), young London-based Irish writer Danny Denton, Mike McCormack, who is just back from a US book tour, Declan Meade, Mary Costello, and Martin Dyar who is now running the Strokestown Poetry Festival which is on next weekend. And I'll be there for the first time - whoop!

So, that was my Cúirt. I hate to think of all I missed due to fatigue/needing to eat/clashing events etc. I managed to meet the lovely Michael Harding and I got him to sign his memoir for my Ma. She will love it. I also met friends from near and far which, at the end of it all, is what good literary festivals are all about: the old friends and the new, the old books and the new, and all that great chat that makes going back to the desk alone both easier and important.

Next stop Strokestown :)

THRESHOLDS FEATURE COMP - I WON!

Jane Ray's Happy PrinceCan't quite believe it but I won the Thresholds Feature Writing Comp with my essay on Ó Faoláin, Wilde and Behan's stories. I thought I hadn't a hope, so I am nicely baffled and thrilled. My friend Dan Powell is runner up with his essay on Stig Dagerman’s collection The Games of Night. My essay is up on the Threshold's site here, Dan's will be up on Monday. I really look forward to being sold Stig Dagerman’s work because I have never heard of him before.

The judges made nice comments: ‘A rich, deft piece about the way we are each inhabited by stories’; ‘the piece charms with its wonderfully lively and engaging voice’; ‘she takes a unique approach to the Competition brief’; ‘the writing illuminates not only the stories discussed but, intriguingly and evocatively, the writer herself – showing how stories touch us as people and influence us as writers’; ‘a fluent and stylish analysis of how stories that are read at a certain age stay with us forever’.

I am a-glow ☺