Sheila Heti and Tao Lin discuss writing about motherhood and psychedelics, what changes when you begin to write under contract, and narrative forms that mimic the menstrual cycle: https://t.co/xfxlbaWAzv
A conversation about their experiences writing books under contract and dealing with editors, agents etc. Tao Lin’s story “Sasquatch” was short-listed for the Willesden Herald prize in our first year (2005/6).
The winner of this year’s RTÉ Guide/Penguin Ireland Short Story Competition is The Rain Falls Differently Over There by Niall McArdle, a meditation on loss, reconnection and the power of memory.
“There’s lots needs sorting out now, said Siobhán back in the peace of the house. The last of the funeral crowd had left. …”
“Here are stories of abandonment, exhibitionism, spontaneous combustion, hysteria, people power, reincarnation, cuisine, race relations, orchidaceous tomfoolery and much more. They will take you to hot beaches and deserted nighttime streets, to disputed urban spaces, to an overheated and under-resourced emergency ward, behind the scenes at a fancy restaurant, and to the chill vicinity of deserted lakes and pools. Three are set in America, two in Africa, one each in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, London and darkest Sussex.”
“If I had known, then, that a dull night’s companionable reading would prove on reflection to be a moment of perfect bliss, it’s hard to say what I would have done. Is the horror past or present? All I know is that right now, today, I am greedy for those days, and all the ones I had are not enough. It was their timelessness that made them worth having.”
Carina Buckley grew up in Margate, Kent, and now lives in Salisbury. She works in higher education and has recently completed her first novel, THE TRANSPARENCY OF WATER. She is working on a collection of short stories as well as a full-length play, SINCE I LAST SAW MY SISTER. She has had two short plays performed at the Salisbury Fringe festival.
A wagonload of ace short stories in the Irish Times online, including from Kevin Barry, Colm Tóibín, Danielle MacLoughlin*, Thomas Morris*, William Wall, Nuala O’Connor*, Sally Rooney, Paul McVeigh and many more.
“The Mayes County Christmas Gun Festival” by David Lewis
“Undercurrents” by Gina Challen
“Love and Hair” by Olga Zilberbourg
“Last Call at the Rialto” by Daniel Waugh
“Looking for Nathalie” by Susan Haigh
“All that Remains” by Rob Hawke
Unspeakable secrets, disappeared husbands, bisexual love triangles, revolutionary conspiracies and African odysseys: from Sixties Paris to San Francisco, Arundel to Latin America, poets, murderers, musicians, schoolkids and festive firearms fanciers stalk these pages, waiting to greet you.