I am reading Alice Munro all the time, really: whole stories, or whole collections, or just bits of stories, for the pure pleasure of the fragment. It’s not extraordinary, then, that I was sharing some of her writing – the title story of her 2001 collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage – in a seminar with students just a couple of days before the news came of her death, with all the accompanying sadness of the loss of her. That story, about a strong plain solitary woman seeking out marriage with an improbable man she hardly knows, deceived by a mean trick playe ..read more

A group of men meet at the Victoria Hotel on Friday nights, shrunken into their overcoats and Stetsons and scarves. Normally, they wouldn’t have to wear such heavy clothes, especially for the summer, especially for the country they have come from, but this summer, nights are especially cold, as if the chill has become a living thing that wraps itself around everything. They have heard about Lesotho’s brutal winters, how sometimes the snow falls so heavily in the mountains that corpses are uncovered once it melts. They have limited their movements to Maseru, where it doesn’t snow at all, but th ..read more

There have been many surprises since I embarked on a career as a writer: the constant feelings of inadequacy, long bouts of creative constipation, the acute pleasure of getting pissed with other writers at literary launches, and the vast amount of time I spend planning and writing applications. If I could somehow conjure a world in which all these applications came to fruition – the residencies, collections, cross-disciplinary exhibitions, the visits to galleries and archives around the world – I would be significantly closer to a Nobel Prize than I am in my present form. However, according to ..read more

The man appeared huge in their apartment door, filling the entire frame of it. He had full, sallow cheeks and coarse black hair, the front of which fell across his forehead, curling and wet. His sturdiness made the furniture in Cliona and Ben’s apartment appear flimsy, the cheap paintings and vases a failed attempt to hide the shabbiness of the carpet and curtains, things they couldn’t really afford to replace. He introduced himself as Leo, shaking their hands. He called Cliona ‘young lady’ and Ben ‘sir’. In neither case did it strike Cliona as patronising or deferential, and she wondered how ..read more

Bernard Travers was not what Greta Diehl was expecting. Not surprising. Even though they’d been pen pals for three years, he’d been careful to send Greta only one photo, and that was of his older brother, Gerard. Gerard was the good-looking one; wasted on the seminary his mother said. Greta had sent several pictures of herself so he knew who he was looking for as he stood with stinging palms on the platform at Hamburg Hauptbahnhof with the wretched case splayed by his side.   He’d grown to hate that case. There had been three changes of trains on the journey ..read more

This is the text of the 2023 Stinging Fly lecture, which was delivered at the United Arts Club in Dublin on November 29th 2023. Considering the news headlines of the last year or so, or indeed the ones being written this minute, I should begin by referring to the words of Theodor Adorno from his 1949 essay: ‘To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.’ My own belief is that although it might seem ruthlessly self-indulgent, or, more to the point, truly delusionary, to be an artist of any hue at the moment, not continuing to be just that, or not recognising our need for artistic ..read more

We are delighted to share Chapter 1 of Ferdia Lennon’s forthcoming novel, Glorious Exploits, which will be published by Fig Tree on January 18. Syracuse 412 BC So Gelon says to me, ‘Let’s go down and feed the Athenians. The weather’s perfect for feeding Athenians.’ Gelon speaks the truth. ’Cause the sun is blazing all white and tiny in the sky, and you can feel a burn from the stones as you walk. Even the lizards are hiding, poking their heads out from under rocks and trees as if to say, Apollo, are you fucking joking? I picture the Athenians all crammed in, their eyes darting about for a bit ..read more

A series of essays reflecting on craft, process, and the pains and pleasures of writing and publishing. Contributors: Kevin Doherty, Sheila Armstrong, Kevin Curran, Donal Ryan, Jan Carson, and Sheena Patel, with an Introduction and Afterword by Series Editor, Olivia Fitzsimons. Afterword December 2023 Over the past thirteen months, lots of people have told me how much these essays have meant to them, I have had conversations about the series at book launches, in workshops, and while drinking wine in the courtyard of Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. I have listened as people expressed how th ..read more

The best things I said about my book, I said at the beginning. My answers have thinned, the more I am asked about it. I have come to realise, the less you say, the more powerful you suggest you are. The other tactic I employ is evasion. To some questions I reply, That’s not for me to answer, because I want to be mysterious—as if the sound of the modern world is too loud for my sensitive soul, as if I am being awoken from an inner sanctum, interrupted from hushed communion with my creativity.  In the depths of the winter lockdown, my world shrunk to five-minute increments of time. Each sec ..read more

It’s dark outside, they’ve been here all afternoon: it must be nearly time to leave. But miraculously, it’s only 6 o’clock, and they’re being called for dinner. She’s relieved. No one had said anything about eating, and she hadn’t dared to ask. It seemed somehow greedy or childish. They traipse down to the kitchen. The others are in what her mother would call ‘skimpy’ things like hot pants and crop tops, not what they’ll ultimately wear, but a kind of transitional apparel in which to perfect hair and make-up. She’s still in her school uniform, slightly overheating. Not knowing about this hot p ..read more