LITERARY TATTOOS

If you love body art, and I do, check out Contrariwise, a site where people display their literary tattoos.

There are tattoos there featuring everyone from Saint-Exupery's Petit Prince, to quotes from Plath, ee cummings and Shakespeare.

The cute couple pictured are toting Plath and Christopher Marlowe. I lifted the photo from the Contrariwise site, so I hope they don't mind.

I have a pseudo-literary tattoo but I kind of only made the connection after the fact and it's pretty tenuous and twee. The connection, not the tattoo.

Still, a quote from some poet or other could make a very nice new tattoo, I'm thinking.

My last book was called Tattoo:Tatú of course...(plug! plug!).

SHARON OLDS ON POETRY

I thought Saturday's Guardian interview with American poet Sharon Olds was extraordinary. Not least because of the quote below, on where writing comes from; it tallies uncannily with my own experience. The interviewer asked if she could see words in her head and she answered:

"It's a little more hearing - it's almost as if I hear them just before they come out the end of the pen. I don't hear them, but it's as if they're in a chamber just outside my hearing. I don't usually try to write a poem unless that's happening. The poems come to me, I don't go to them. As soon as I see that what I'm mulling - a line or a sentence is repeating itself in my mind, like an obsessive thought, or a kind of conceit or concept - as soon as I see that it's a poem, I go and write it. And there's a lot of crossing out, I write the first draft in maybe half an hour, 45 minutes - these are all pretty short poems. When I feel that I've made a false move, I try to cross it out back up to where it's okay. And then try to bring it down again, OK, all the way to the end."

Read the full interview here.

MAN BOOKER LONGLIST OUT NOW!

Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger
Gaynor Arnold - Girl in a Blue Dress
Sebastian Barry - The Secret Scripture
John Berger - From A to X
Michelle de Kretser - The Lost Dog
Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies
Linda Grant - The Clothes on Their Backs
Mohammed Hanif - A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency
Joseph O'Neill - Netherland
Salman Rushdie - The Enchantress of Florence
Tom Rob Smith - Child 44
Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

Our own Sebastian Barry and Joseph O'Neill (pictured) feature. Well done. Exciting!

STRANDHILL AFTERS

Well, my friend and I had a great time at the Summerfest in Strandhill, County Sligo over the week-end, particularly enjoying the wisdom and knowledge of the very fine teachers Ted Deppe and Annie Deppe. (If you get a chance to do a workshop with both or either of these two, grab it.) There was a lot of talk about writing, a lot of writing on-the-spot, and plenty of socialising at the BBQ and pub.

Much of the writing was done from prompts, an approach that yields mixed results, but Órfhlaith and I were both happy and surprised to find that we came home with pieces that will grow into ‘real’ writing. I was amazed at what some writers can produce on the spur of the moment; clever people!

The atmosphere was encouraging and positive and you can’t argue with that. Strandhill was awash with surfers enjoying the weather and the waves, and with writers, buzzing about their own and each other’s work. All in all, a very worthy and welcome week-end of writing and new friendships.

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

Get To The World of Men, Welcome (short stories) for the bargain price of £106.30 (€164.34) on Amazon.co.uk or, pay $198.35 (€126.01) over on Amazon.com.

Bargain! (You can pay less if you like, but why bother?)

LITERARY RESOURCE SHEET

Here's a free, downloadable info sheet of national resources for writers and literature professionals in the UK and Ireland, from Literature Training. Everything you wanted to know about writing in the UK and RoI, apparently.

It's a 20 page listing of organisations, websites, magazines, publications and information sources across the writing and literature sector. Handy!

See here

CRASHAW PRIZE FOR 1st POETRY BOOKS

OK, I seem to have blog fever today. Must stop posting... It's actually all to do with procrastination...

Anyway, another great initiative from Salt: The Crashaw Prize for the publication of début collections of poetry.

The Crashaw Prize will be awarded to up to six new writers each year. (SIX!!) Authors must reside in the UK or Ireland, the USA, or Australia and New Zealand. Winners of the Prize will be published simultaneously in the UK, USA and Australia each summer.

‘We want to continue to support new writing talent, but more than this, to draw attention to really first rate collections from poets both young and old,’ says Salt director Chris Hamilton-Emery.

More here

LITERARY TOP 10 ON PULP

My literary Top 10 is featured on Pulp.net's site. On a different day, I'd have given different answers perhaps, but there you go. It was all true at the time!!

KENNY'S BOOK SHOP RE-OPENS

OK, before we get too excited, yes, Galway's other* favourite bookshop has re-opened but, no, they are not back on High Street. Rather, they have converted the ground floor of their Liosbán Retail Park premises on the Tuam Road.

Des Kenny says: ‘While online bookselling worldwide continues to grow apace, there is no substitute for taking a book in your hand and flicking through the pages. We were overwhelmed by the reaction when we closed the Bookshop in High St in 2006. Since then people have continually asked us if we might reconsider opening a bookshop in Galway. We moved into our existing premises in Liosbán over a year ago. Although we haven’t been open to the public until now, former customers and browsers call to the premises daily asking to look through the shelves.’

More here.

*The other other favourite being Charlie Byrne's of course!

EVENING TREAT FROM THE FLY

The incomparable Stinging Fly have a reading TONIGHT for all you folks in Dublin, at the equally incomparable Winding Stair Bookshop, 40 Lower Ormond Quay (just beside the Ha'penny Bridge) @ 7pm.

To mark the launch of it's summer issue, the magazine are holding a reading with some contributors, including poet Paul Perry and fiction writer Jennifer Brady.

Read Paul's lovely piece on orchids and fatherhood from a recent Irish Times here.

LAST CHANCE - WIN €1500 FOR A STORY

This is my last reminder to you before the 31ST JULY deadline for the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize, run by the Munster Literature Centre, judged this year by me.
See here.

Win €1500 first prize and publication in Southword and get your work read by Lucy Luck, UK Literary Agent to writers such as Catherine O'Flynn and Kevin Barry.

Second Prize is €500 and publication in Southword.

Four other shortlisted entries will be selected for publication in Southword and receive a fee of €100.

I am off to Dublin to talk to some American writing students about the writing life. And for the week-end my best pal and me are going to Sligo to take part in the Strandhill Summer Fest - a week-end long writing workshop. Should be fun!

p.s. The first person to guess the significance of the picture of the seagull accompanying this post wins a signed copy of Tattoo : Tatú!

FABER WRITING COURSES

Posh publishers Faber have Tobias Hill and Jeanette Winterson facilitating their inaugural Faber Academy Creative Writing Course in the deliciously wonderful Shakespeare & Co bookshop in Paris in October (9th to 12th). The course costs €630.
Topics include:
When do you need to tell a story and when do you let it tell itself?
How far can you trust your readers to understand what is left unspoken?
What is gained - and what is lost - by describing characters in the flesh?

Apparently they plan to run these courses in other cities too, including Dublin. See here for more. Sounds great to me but, oh, the price!

SELF-PROMOTION & THE WRITER

Tania has an interesting post about promoting her new book of short stories on her blog. She's looking for fresh and exciting ways to draw attention to her book The White Road and Other Stories.

Promoting your own work is important and difficult. You have to do the best by your book in order to gain some sort of profile for your work but it's often hard to know exactly what to do.

Self promotion is a very un-Irish concept; as a nation we lack self-esteem. Boasting is a no-no and boasters/confident people are often either laughed at or taken down to size. Or both. It's some sort of Catholic hangover. But I think younger people, and therefore younger writers, are a lot more confident and will be better equipped in the self-promo stakes.

I've had emails from writers promoting their own books and I have to admit it's made me uncomfortable. I'm so used to self-promotion being seen as a bad thing and that's probably why I cringed at that type of direct marketing. But maybe I'm just jealous at the balls of those who are able to throw themselves behind their books in that confident, pro-active way.

But, as I've said elsewhere, the writer who does not stick their head above the parapet by actively taking part in the literary world (submitting, reading, promoting their work etc.) remains invisible. How can anyone know a writer is out there, writing, if they don't push themselves along? Like it or hate it, it's one of the facts of being a writer today. You have to be able (even if you dislike it) to push your self into the public eye.

I wish Tania lots of luck and lots of good promotional ideas for her book.

IRISH HAIKU COMPETITION

The Irish Haiku Society are running an International Haiku Competition

The IHS International Haiku Competition offers prizes of Euro 150, Euro 50 and Euro 30 for unpublished haiku/senryu in English.
In addition there will be up to seven Highly Commended haiku/senryu.

All the entries should be postmarked by September 30th 2008.

Address for entries: Administrator, The IHS International Haiku Competition 2008, 75 Willow Park Grove, Glasnevin, Dublin 11, Ireland

See the IHS site here for more

SHORT STORIES & BOOK GROUPS

I ran a book-group in the bookshop I worked in for over two years. I ran two others in two libraries for over four years. Rarely could I interest my participants in short stories. Until a few writers joined the latter library group. Then things really took off and we had a discussionary ball, to coin a phrase. We read Hemingway, McGahern, Scott Fitzgerald, Edna O'Brien, Frank O'Connor and many more.

Christopher Meeks discusses this on the She Is Too Fond of Books site and has lots to say on the subject. A small quote from Meeks:

'If librarians don’t see the book reviewed, how can short story collections get in libraries? If libraries don’t offer a lot of collections, then how do people consider short story collections? If book reviewers don’t consider collections, then it’s not on the radar of ordinary readers. Thus, it’s an extra challenge to get a short story collection seen.'

Read the rest of the article here.

SHORT ON SUGAR

Here's a fun call for subs from the Vestal Review site. A 7 to 13 word bittersweet love story:

Maybe you've heard about the success of "Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs" anthology? (Amazon rank 532 as of 4/1/08, probably unheard of for an anthology).

Would you like to participate in a similar anthology, "Short on Sugar, High on Honey. Bittersweet Love Stories?" All stories are between seven words (lucky number) and thirteen (bad luck). Original stories only. No titles.

We already have a NYC agent for this project and would like to move ASAP.

Submit to SHORTONSUGAR at VESTALREVIEW dot NET as pasted text. No attachments. Include your physical and your e-mail addresses. Submit as many stories as you want, but each in a separate e-mail. Put "Short on Sugar" in the subject line. Please do not use any other subject lines or your submission will be deleted by the system.

We will only reply to accepted submissions.

MY BOOKSHELF: THE STUDY

I can't blog about what I want to blog about today, because it would get me into trouble. It's work related and it's making me grumpy.

So, instead, I browsed around and found under the title An Almost Meme over on Nik's Blog, writer Nik Perring posts pictures of his bookshelf.

He encourages others to do the same. You're not allowed to tidy your shelf and, as my camera is on my desk, and my shelf is a foot away, I just turned and snapped.

And I made a discovery: The missing Garden State DVD is there. Yay! Viewing fodder for Saturday night. (Moral: never send a man to find an AWOL DVD...)

When I saw that, it struck me how little I look at - never mind choose things to read from - this particular shelf. The tub of red glitter gets more use than some of the books, I reckon. Hearteningly, though, I have actually read most of the books at some point. So, it'd be mostly a case of re-reading. Click on the pic to see the titles more clearly, if you wish.

Silliness Spoken of Short Fiction

This wrong-headed silliness from Susan Hill in The Guardian today:

A hundred different people would give you a hundred reasons why short stories do not sell well. Mine are that, ultimately, the story is less satisfying than the novel, lacks the depth, variety, richness and multilayers of meaning and reference. The short story can do much but still not as much as the novel. It is a small, highly polished jewel and can be flawless. There are some masterpieces. But the operative word is still "small".

There is an urgency to the short story that can’t exist in the novel. People talk about the confines and the narrow scope of the short story as opposed to the novel; it’s not a confined form and comparing it to the novel is like comparing it to the poem. I have found depth, variety, richness and multilayers of meaning and reference in so very many many short stories.

I don't know whose short fiction Susan Hill is reading, but here are a few to try:
Edna O’Brien, Flannery O’Connor, Michéle Roberts, Claire Keegan, Seán O’Reilly, Mike McCormack, Richard Ford, Mary Morrissey, Anne Enright, Colum McCann, John Updike, Emma Donoghue, Manuel Munoz, Raymond Carver, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Helen Dunmore, Tim Winton, Rose Tremain, Ernest Hemingway, Mavis Gallant, Michael Trussler, Robert Olen Butler...just to name a few of the more famous practitioners.

RUSHDIE WINS BEST OF BOOKER

Salman Rushdie's book Midnight's Children has, predictably, won the Best of the Booker today.

Hrrmm. I found it unreadable, personally. Perhaps I should try again...Poor old Peter Carey - I was rooting for you.

My previous post on this award here.

RANA DASGUPTA TO JUDGE WILLESDEN

After the furore last year, Zadie Smith has resigned (or been pushed?) as judge of The Willesden Herald international short story competition. This from the Willesden site:

Roll up, roll up! Throw your stories at us and win a mug. Judge: Rana Dasgupta. Closing date: 19 December 2008. Opening date: to be announced. Details to be announced. Meaning of life to be announced.

Rana's story 'The Flyover' which was shortlisted for the National Short Story Prize in 2006 was stunning and clever. I've never forgotten it and how it made me feel. See his fun website here for more about the man and his books, which include Tokyo Cancelled.

THE SHORT REVIEW, JULY ISSUE

The Short Review , July edition, is now up. Reviews of short story collections, new and old! This month's Review includes Vanessa Gebbie, Anne Enright, Aimee Bender and Richard Bardsley.

I absolutely LOVE the author interviews. Each writer is asked the same questions and it's fascinating to read the different approaches of each writer, to writing and to answering the questions.

SEAN O FAOLAIN COMPETITION REMINDER

Seán O Faoláin Short Story Prize, for a story of up to 3000 words. Closing date 31st July. First prize €1,500.

For entry details see Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize.

See here for my previous post on judging this competition and guidelines on entering.

Frank O'Connor Winner Announced Early

Jhumpa Lahiri, a 40 year old American author of Bengali descent, has been announced as the 2008 winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, for her story collection Unaccustomed Earth. I am currently enjoying reading the spare and poignant stories in this collection.

Pulitzer-winner Lahiri’s book was on a longlist of thirty-nine short fiction collections, announced by the Munster Literature Centre in early May, for the €35,000 prize. Most longlistees will have been waiting for the shortlist to appear about now, so this announcement will come as a surprise.

This year's judges – Granta Fiction Editor Rosalind Porter, Cork City Chief Librarian Liam Ronayne, and Irish Times Literary Correspondent Eileen Battersby – opted to announce Lahiri as winner instead of creating a shortlist. She will travel to Cork in September to pick up her prize.

See today's Irish Times here and Guardian here for more information on this announcement.

ART & POETRY IN BALLINASLOE

The very talented Little-Campbells are well represented at this year's An tSuca Fiáin River and Arts Festival in Ballinasloe.
See the festival site here

Wednesday the 9th July at 8pm sees Tommy Campbell and Joyce Little launch an exhibition of their sculpture and paintings at Tosnú Art Gallery.

Their daughter Zara Little-Campbell is the guest reader at the library's annual festival poetry reading on Thursday 10th July at 8pm. That event will also see the launch of Rewind, an anthology of new writing published by Wales's Parthian Books.

Zara has just completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Trinity College Carmarthen in Wales and was the recent winner of the Jonathan Swift Award for Poetry.