In The Irish Times this Saturday, Mike McCormack tells me about his latest novel, This Plague of Souls. PJ Kirby and Kevin Twomey talk to Kate Demolder about their book, I’m Grand Mamual. I write about my own book, Dirty Linen, The Troubles in My Home Place, which grew out of two articles published in The Irish Times. There is a Q&A wth Mary Morirssy about her new novel, Penelope Unbound. And there is an extract from Irish Times columnist Justine McCarthy’s new book An Eye on Ireland: A Journey Through Social Change.
Reviews are Diarmaid Ferriter on John Hume: The Persuader by Stephen Walker; Roddy Doyle on Sly Stone’s memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin); Stephen Sexton on the best new poetry; Joe Humphreys on I’ve Been Thinking by Daniel C Dennett and Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will by Kevin J Mitchell; Paul Clements on local history books; Lucy Sweeney Byrne on The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer; Ray Burke on An Eye on Ireland, A Journey Through Social Change: New and Selected Journalism by Justine McCarthy; Rabeea Saleem on Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri; Paschal Donohoe on David Runciman’s The Handover: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs; and Sarah Gilmartin on Julia by Sandra Newman.
This weekend’s Irish Times Eason offer is Grave Expectations by Alice Bell, just €5.99, a €5 saving.
Irish writer Niamh Mac Cabe has won The London Magazine Short Story Prize 2023 after her story Four Night Seas “stunned” judges Tom Conaghan (publisher of Scratch Books), Eley Williams (author of Attrib. and Other Stories and Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good), RZ Baschir (winner of the White Review Short Story Prize 2021 and winner of the PEN America/Robert J Dau Prize 2022 for Emerging Writers) and Andrew Holgate (former literary editor of the Sunday Times and part-time associate agent at Andrew Nurnberg).
Mac Cabe is a visual artist and writer of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid prose. She has won several awards, including the Wasafiri Prize, John McGahern Award and Molly Keane Award, and placed or been shortlisted in the Costa Short Story Award, ALCS Tom Gallon Trust Award, Glimmer Train Press Award, American Short Fiction’s Prize, Harvard Review’s Chapbook Prize, New Ohio Review’s Editor’s Award, Lit Mag’s Virginia Woolf Award, and Masters Review Flash Contest..
“In Four Night Seas, I try to capture the oddness inherent in fiction-writing, in the elusive and cryptic act of storytelling itself,” MacCabe said of her winning story. “My attempt involves presenting conflicting versions of a singular fictitious event as if I am stuttering my way through a false confession, only to break at the end. I am so grateful to this year’s esteemed judges for plucking Four Night Seas out of what I know to be a tremendous pool of shortlisted stories.”
Conaghan said: “I was hugely impressed by the astounding vision and subtle control in Niamh’s winning story. She unpicks the threads of a linear narrative to weave something mercurial and enticing and vast. The relationship of its parts are soft and fluid, refracting a slim moment to splay all its whispers, echoes and glimpses; they lap at us and gently erode our experience of the now. (I also warm to any story that hints at its own lofty goal, As Niamh herself writes: ‘trying to do the inexplicable justice…').”
Belfast writer Gráinne O’Hare was also highly commended for her story, Strange Day in Berlin. Picador announced this week that it is to publish her debut novel, Thirst Trap, in summer 2025.
The synopsis reads: “Maggie, Harley, and Róise have spent their 20s careering around the bars of Belfast with riotous abandon, the wine cheap and the memories priceless. However, the three of them used to be four; and now, one year on from a tragic accident, they are still shaken by the sudden death of their best friend Lydia.
“The memory of the last and worst fight they had with her hangs heavy over their heads as they struggle to process their loss, afraid to let go of the home and the life they shared together, and now the three women each find the nights becoming wilder and the days more full of regret.”
O’Hare is completing a PhD on 18th-century women’s life writing at Newcastle University and received the North Debut Award for Fiction from new Writing North in 2022. She was awarded Arts Council funding in 202
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Circling The Square, a poetry and music festival in honour of poet Dennis O’Driscoll (1954 - 2012) will take place at The Source Arts Centre in Thurles - the town in which he grew up - from Oct 20th to the 22nd. An ambitious weekend of events will include readings by many of Ireland’s best poets, including Thomas McCarthy, Kerry Hardie, Peter Sirr, Jessica Traynor, Molly Twomey, Enda Wyley, Nithy Kasa, Eleanor Hooker, Stephen James Smith, Anne Tannam, Emily Cullen and many others. An afternoon of readings on Saturday 21st will feature many emerging poets and will offer a great chance to hear a variety of new approaches to the art of poetry. All of the readings will be interwoven with music from musicians and singers ranging across several genres, including traditional, folk, classical and jazz.
The weekend will also include a poetry workshop led by Enda Wyley aimed at ‘Developing your Craft of Poetry Writing’ (email thurlescirclingthesquare@gmail.com to register an interest in taking part); a discussion on ‘Dennis O’Driscoll - The Man, The Poet and his legacy’, chaired by Declan O’Driscoll; Molly Twomey will present a seminar on poetry and writing to Leaving Cert students in Coláiste Mhuire Co-Ed school and there will be a guided walk through Thurles led by local historian Jimmy Duggan, visiting areas of the town referenced in poems by Dennis.
For more information about Circling The Square, please visit thesourceartscentre.ie/whats-on/events/circling-the-square-2
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Nets of Wonder (Beehive Books) is a heartfelt series of essays by writer and clinical psychologist, Olive Travers. The book, which is illustrated by Barry Britton and accompanied by newly composed music by Eamon Travers, was launched at the National Print Museum in early October. Travers is a long time contributor to Sunday Miscellany and listeners to that programme will be familiar with her melodious Donegal accent. These 12 pieces in the book, which have been previously read on that RTE Radio programme, encompass universal themes of birth, death, emigration and familial relationships. In them, Olive Travers merges her acute observations of human behaviour with a joyful appreciation of nature. Britton, who is renowned for his Ballyshannon folk festival and surfing posters, illuminates the text while Eamon Travers creates a musical landscape for his mother’s essays. And while you can read and listen (via a QR code) with the book, there is an opportunity to hear the readings and listen to the music live at the Allingham Arts Festival in Ballyshannon on November 9 at 8.30pm. allinghamfestival.com
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Lavinia Greenlaw has been appointed Poetry Editor at Faber, succeeding Matthew Hollis, who announced earlier in the year he was stepping back from the role.
Greenlaw has published six collections of poetry with Faber, including Minsk (2003), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot, Forward and Whitbread Poetry prizes, A Double Sorrow: Troilus and Criseyde (2014) which was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award, and The Built Moment (2019). Her novels include In the City of Love’s Sleep (2018), and her non-fiction includes The Importance of Music to Girls (2007), Some Answers Without Questions (2021) and, forthcoming, The Vast Extent: On Seeing and Not Seeing Further (2024). Selected Poems will be published in January 2024.
Greenlaw said: ‘I am delighted to have been given this role, especially at a time when poetry is particularly vigorous, inventive and responsive. Across the generations, we are seeing the confidence and artistry with which poetic conventions, values and tropes are being recast. The past, present and future of poetry are in intense conversation, and the Faber poetry list has a proven commitment to all three. It is a profound honour and responsibility to be the person carrying that commitment forwards.’
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The Leaves Festival of Writing & Music, from November 8th-11th, brings the best of Irish writing and music to Co Laois next month, with Aingeala Flannery as its writer in residence. Her novel The Amusements won the Kerry Group Novel of the Year Award at Listowel Writer’s Week this year and was awarded the John McGahern Prize. Aingeala will be visiting schools, libraries AND in Portlaoise Prison. Her public event this year will be with Anne Enright – both interviewed by journalist Alex Clark. The Amusements is also the Leaves Festival One County One Book for Laois.
This year’s festival will also host novelist Emily Hourican who has just published An Invitation to the Kennedys; Donal Ryan with singer songwriter and musician Ultan Conlon; a crime-writing evening with John Banville and Andrea Carter; a screening of Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?; a comic book writing workshop with Colin O’Mahony; a spoken work event celebrating the theme of Stand By Me. Leaves Festival of Writing and Music, Nov 8 - 11 2023.
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Booker Prize-winner Salman Rushdie’s new memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, a gripping account of surviving an attempt on his life 30 years after a fatwa was ordered against him, will be published by Penguin Random House on April 16th next year. Speaking out for the first time, and in detail, about the traumatic events of August 12th, 2022, Knife is, its publisher claims, a powerful, deeply personal and ultimately uplifting meditation on life, loss, love, the power of art, finding the strength to keep going – and to stand up again. ‘This was a necessary book for me to write: a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art,’ Rushdie said.
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On Saturday, October 21st, at 7pm Mia Gallagher, June Caldwell and Rob Doyle take part in a writers’ talk moderated by Belfast author Paul McVeigh in the Brooks Hotel Downstairs Cinema. Who gets to tell the story of Dublin? How has the portrayal of the city changed over the years? What is Dublin like now and do we see the real city in literature? Admission: €15. Booking: Writers Talk at Brooks Hotel
On Saturday, November 11th at 2pm, Gallagher will be chairing a discussion between two authors of short fiction with new collections published this year, Tom Morris and Fergus Cronin. The setting is the Lab space in dlr Lexicon Library. This event is free but bookings are essential. Art of the Short Story
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The Red Line Book Festival is on all this week with over 40 events in county libraries and exciting venues across South Dublin. One of the highlights of this year’s festival is the Decade of Centenaries Seminar on Sunday, October 22nd, from 11am-5pm with leading historians of the period, looking at some of the key events and personalities of 1923, as well as looking back on the Decade of Centenaries.
Historian and Podcaster Turtle Bunbury will host all seminar sessions. Guests include Liz Gillis discussing the Story of Noel Lemass: His Life and Death; David McCullagh will then have a fascinating discussion on de Valera’s 1923 “Nothing but a bullet will stop me”; Niall Quinn (in conversation with Liz Gillis) will chat about Oscar Traynor - A Re-evaluation of a footballer, rebel, politician and football administrator and finally Caitriona Crowe will take a look back at how we managed to commemorate (and occasionally came close to sabotaging) the centenary of the revolutionary decade.
The Red Line Book Festival is produced by South Dublin Libraries and Arts at South Dublin County Council offering a programme of events and workshops that appeals to people of all ages and interests, from children to adults, casual readers to bookworms. redlinefestival.ie for the full programme of events taking place across all venues.
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Following last week’s announcement that Spotify has struck an audiobook streaming deal with ‘all major book publishers’ the Society of Authors is concerned that authors and agents have not been consulted or approached for permission. It is calling for greater transparency and accountability from the publishers concerned.
“We know the devastating effect that music streaming has had on artists’ incomes, and the impact of streaming and subscription video on demand platforms on screenwriter incomes and their working conditions. We have long been concerned about streaming models for books,” the SoA said.
“The streaming of audiobooks competes directly with sales and is even more damaging than music streaming because books are typically only read once, while music is often streamed many times.”
“An article in The Bookseller (3 October 2023) points out, ‘Book publishers have long expressed reservations about subscription deals for digital content, but Spotify has offered variations of the typical pooled income arrangement, with a more limited offer that publishers believe will assure agents and authors that their income streams will not be undermined.’
“However, authors and agents have simply not been contacted about such offers, let alone reassured. The fact that all major publishers have entered such arrangements at the same time seems to raise questions that perhaps should be reported to the competition authorities.”
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The next public lecture in the RIA’s Discourse Series will be delivered by Anders Olsson, Chair of the Nobel Committee, the Swedish Academy, on Tuesday, October 17th, at 6pm, in the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2.
Prof Olsson will discuss the universal aims of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel Prize is and has always been considered a universal prize. This is perhaps its unique, prestigious and everywhere acknowledged property. In The World Republic of Letters Pascale Casanova even writes: “There is no better measure of the unification of the international literary field than the effectively universal respect commanded by this prize.” How effective the prize is to unify the literary world is open to debate.
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Nigerian poet Samuel Yakura is bringing his new poetry play, “The Perfect Immigrant” on a nationwide tour. The one man show, which is semi-autobiographical, explores the challenges faced by young migrants as they arrive in Ireland. A mixture of poetry and prose the story centers around Levi, a courageous young Nigerian man who leaves his homeland, with three worn suitcases, to fulfill his dream of studying engineering. From job hunting and navigating Ireland’s dating scene to searching for red chilli peppers in Lucan, the show is a heartfelt and hilarious exploration of the struggles faced by those in search of a brighter future. The script is written with a unique blend of Irish-Nigerian humour and Yakura’s hope is that by sharing stories like this on stage it will encourage more minority cultures to engage with the literary and theatre scene in Ireland. Katie O’Halloran directs and tour dates include The Civic Theatre, Tallaght 9th-11th Nov.; Cork Arts Theatre, 16th-18th Nov. and Town Hall Theatre, Galway Nov. 27th.
