Cover of 'Nude'

This is the cover for my new short story collection Nude due out in September from Salt.

The cover image is by talented young American artist Rachel Manconi. Thanks to Rachel for permission to use her image and to Jen and Chris of Salt for ensuring a great cover for my book.

Excitement!

Cork-City Frank O'Connor Short Story Award Shortlist 2009

This news just in from the Munster Literature Centre! Irish writer Philip Ó Ceallaigh has been shortlisted for the second time for the Cork-City Frank O'Connor Short Story Award, as has Kiwi author Charlotte Grimshaw. And the wonderful Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah is also on the list. I talked about Petina's Elegy for Easterly earlier here.

HUGE congrats to the shortlistees. Here is the announcement from the administrators' of the award:

The shortlist for the 2009 Cork-City Frank O'Connor Short Story Award has been decided by an international jury. The award at 35,000 euro is the richest prize in the world for the short story form and is given annually to an original collection of stories judged to be the best. Previous winners have included Haruki Murakami, Miranda July, Jhumpa Lahiri and Yiyun Li. The award is organised by the Munster Literature Centre with generous funding from Cork City Council.

Notable names edged out for a position on this year's shortlist include Booker winner Kazuo Ishiguro, Orange Prize winner Chimanda Ngozi Adiche, veteran short story authors Ali Smith, Mary Gaitskill and James Lasdun and reviewers' darling Sana Krasikov.

The winner will be announced in Cork on September 20th at the closing ceremony of the tenth Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival which is the oldest annual short story festival in the world.

Further information can be obtained from Patrick Cotter, Director, The Munster Literature Centre, www.munsterlit.ie ++353 214312955

The shortlisted books are as follows:

An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah published by Faber, London

Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer with law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University, and the University of Zimbabwe. Her short fiction and essays have been published in eight countries. She lives with her son Kush in Geneva, where she works as counsel in an international organisation that provides legal aid on international trade law to developing countries. Her story collection, An Elegy for Easterly is published by Faber in April 2009. She is currently completing The Book of Memory, her first novel. Both books will also be published in Finland, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Singularity by Charlotte Grimshaw published by Vintage, New Zealand

Charlotte Grimshaw is a fiction writer. Her first novel was described as ‘New Zealand noir,’ and her later books continue to draw from a range of genres and dramatic situations. Grimshaw has contributed short fiction to anthologies, was awarded the 2006 Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award, and published her first short story collection in 2007. Titled Opportunity, this collection was short-listed for the world’s richest short fiction prize, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Ripples and other Stories by Shih-Li Kow published by Silverfish Books, Malaysia

Shih-Li Kow was born in Kuala Lumpur and was educated for the most part in schools in Malaysia. Her stories have been published in the anthologies, News from Home and Silverfish New Writing 7. Sh-li Kow holds a degree in chemical engineering and worked as an industrial engineer in a multinational consumer products company for more than ten years. She is currently in retail. She resides in Kuala Lumpur with her extended family and son, Jack.


The Pleasant Light of Day by Philip O Ceallaigh Published by Penguin Ireland.

Philip O Ceallaigh has lived and worked at a variety of jobs in Ireland,
Spain, Russia, the United States, Kosovo and Georgia.
He has lived mostly in Bucharest since 2000 where among other things he translates English subtitles for Romanian films. He has won the Glen Dimplex Award and the Rooney Prize for his first short story collection Notes from A Turkish Whorehouse which was also shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award in 2006.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower Published by FSG New York and Granta UK

Wells Tower’s short stories and journalism have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, The Washington Post Magazine, and elsewhere. He received two Pushcart Prizes and the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review. He divides his time between Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Brooklyn, New York.

Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy published by Harper Perennial New York.

Simon Van Booy was born in London and grew up in rural Wales and Oxford. After playing football in Kentucky, he lived in Paris and Athens. In 2002 he was awarded an MFA and won the H.R. Hays Poetry Prize. His journalism has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times and the New York Post. Van Booy is the author of The Secret Lives of People in Love, now translated into several languages. He lives in New York City, where he teaches part-time at the School of Visual Arts and at Long Island University. He is also involved in the Rutgers Early College Humanities Program (REaCH) for young adults living in underserved communities.

CLAIRE KEEGAN wins Davy Byrnes Award

Somewhat predictably, short story mistress CLAIRE KEEGAN has won the €25,000 Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award.

Keegan’s winning short story 'Foster' was chosen from a shortlist of six by Richard Ford. Caroline Walsh, Literary Editor of The Irish Times, read from Ford's winning citation, in which he praised the writer’s “sparkling talent”.

Apparently Claire told how she walked across snowy fields with her entry to the comp close to the deadline, until she found a postbox, and had dropped the envelope into it before wondering how the postman was going to collect it in a mini-blizzard. Clearly and, luckily for her, her story made it to Dublin in time.

More here in today's Times.

FUTURE OF IWC - HAVE YOUR SAY

There will be an Open Public Meeting to discuss the future of the Irish Writers' Centre on

Saturday 27th June at 3.30 p.m. in the Irish Writers' Centre

For the last few weeks the Board of the Irish Writers' Centre has been consulting widely with individual writers and with people interested in literature and the arts generally. It has also been engaged with sister organisations in the literature field. The purpose of this extensive consultation is to ascertain what role, if any, the Irish Writers' Centre should play in the cultural life of the country in the future. At a meeting on the 14 July, the Board will consider all the options and all the recommendations submitted.

If you have any recommendations regarding the future functions, activities, responsibilities, etc, of the Irish Writers' Centre and have not had a chance to submit them already, this open meeting will offer you the opportunity of doing so.

Irish Writers' Centre
19 Parnell Square
Dublin 1

t: +353 (0)1 872 1302
e: info@writerscentre.ie
w: www.writerscentre.ie

HAPPY BLOOMSDAY - FROM ME AND UNCLE JIMMY

Ulysses and therefore Bloomsday marks the celebration of the day – 16th June 1904 – on which James Joyce had his first outing with his future wife, Galway-woman Nora Barnacle. In the book, it was a day on which not a lot happens to Leopold Bloom but it all happens in vivid, sometimes impenetrable, Joyce-speak.

And before you ask, no, I haven’t read it all – just bits. On the centenary of Bloomsday in 2004, at Nora Barnacle’s House on Bowling Green, I read aloud an extract that may have been about sex or may have been about the river but, either way, it was beautiful prose. One hundred readers read from Ulysses that day. (Click on the blurry image above to see my commemorative cert.)

Declan Kiberd’s new book on Joyce looks fascinating: Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living. In the Sunday Times magazine of the 7th of June, he wrote interestingly on the notion of bohemians with reference to Joyce. (If it was an extract from the new book, it didn’t say so.):

‘The Bohemians were arrogant,’ Kiberd said. ‘They saw Soho, Montmartre and Greenwich Village as spheres of sublimation, in which ideas and feelings now denied in everyday life could alone be enjoyed...“Culture” was now a separate sphere, disconnected from everyday life.’ Kiberd goes on to say that, ‘A healthy art arises from life and always returns to it.’ One good reason that those of us who practice art full time need to embrace healthy doses of real life, removed from our isolated desks, in order to write truthful fiction and/or produce good art. For me that means family life - the day to day of raising three kids and keeping a home, and a relationship, alive and happy.

Joyce himself said: “The ordinary is the proper domain of the artist. The extraordinary can safely be left to journalists.”

Joyce’s mother was a Murray from Chapelizod. My mother’s maiden name is Murray and her people were from Chapelizod – well, more accurately, the Strawberry Beds. My great-grandfather was notoriously secretive about his origins and I often entertain the (admittedly somewhat fanciful) notion that he was too embarrassed by his relative James Joyce’s writing to want to be associated with him. Yes, I am related to Joyce. If only in my fictional little mind...

MAN BOOKER INTL - DISCUSSION EVENT, DUBLIN

This from today's Irish Times:

How was the Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro selected as the winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2009? All will be revealed at a public event in Trinity College Dublin at 12.30pm on Thursday, June 25th, just hours before the award is made at a gala dinner that night in the college. At the event the three judges – Jane Smiley, Amit Chaudhuri and Andrey Kurkov – will discuss their choice under the chairmanship of Colm Tóibín, who was a judge of the 2007 award.

“Alice Munro is mostly known as a short-story writer and yet she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels,” say the judges, who will elaborate more in Trinity on how they picked her from a list that included Peter Carey, James Kelman and Joyce Carol Oates.

Munro, who lives in Clinton, Ontario, near Lake Huron, has a writing career stretching back 40 years, since the publication of Dance of the Happy Shades and Other Stories in 1968 .

The panel discussion is free. Tickets can be booked at www.tcd.ie/library/booker

THE STINGING FLY WANTS YOU!

Here's a chance to join the line-up for one of THE STINGING FLY'S planned readings at the Irish Writers' Centre this July.

The Stinging Fly is organising three readings in July at the Irish Writers' Centre on Parnell Square. The final reading, on July 23rd, will feature six writers reading alongside Michael J. Farrell, author of the recently published story collection Life in the Universe.

To be one of those six writers you need to apply as follows:

Please submit 3 pages of prose (double spaced) or 3 poems to
readings.stingingfly@gmail.com

Submissions will be accepted until 5 p.m on Thursday 25 June.

Only e-mailed submissions will be accepted.

They will choose three poets and three prose writers, and notify them by 9 July.

Writers who have never before read in front of an audience are encouraged to submit.

The three readings take place at 7 p.m on three consecutive Thursdays - July 9th, 16th and 23rd. We'll have more details on the series by early next week.

POETIC JUSTICE - NEW FORUM FOR POETS

Poets Jane Holland and Annie Finch have founded a new forum which is "dedicated to providing a platform for those who wish to discuss or read about gender-discrimination issues, networking and engaging with such debates in a friendly and non-partisan way."

From the site: "In the West, feminist attitudes in literature, and especially poetry, are currently regarded as unnecessary and even counterproductive, when the opposite is too often true. We have won some battles, that's not in dispute, but after thousands of years of domination by a patriarchal system, it would be naive to believe that a few decades of feminist thinking could eradicate the problem forever. We are still by no means assured of equality and a lack of discrimination on grounds of gender, and sites such as this exist for that very reason."

If this sounds interesting to you, you can join the site here.

5 WOMEN ON DAVY BYRNE'S SHORTLIST

The shortlist for the Davy Byrne's Award is announced today in the Irish Times. I've met/heard of/know/read five of the writers, but Susan Stairs is a new name to me. Eoin McNamee is the solo male on the shortlist.

The winner will be announced later this month. Good luck to all, but especially to my pal, Kathleen. More here and below is the shortlist with Richard Ford - the judge's - thoughts on each story:

Foster by Claire Keegan

A child’s rapt and eloquent vision of life-in-tumult between two families. In lifting a homely rural life to our moral notice, the story exhibits a patient attention to life’s vast consequence and finality, and does so through a lavish, discriminating appetite for language and its profound capacity to return us to life renewed.

Living in Unknown by Mary Leland

An elegant and harrowing story of aging and reconciliation and compassion, and of the edgy separation of one’s self from the moorings of past, parents and youth. This story is intense with experience and with language that’s vividly apt. The reader’s own experience is of an anguish that somehow consoles and preserves.

This Isn’t Heaven by Molly McCloskey

A subtle and perceptive story, set in contemporary Africa, that deftly and affectingly compresses and focuses time and geography. Its signal success is one that it shares with many excellent stories: to locate drama to the side of where we might expect to find it and then to make its subject seem essential. Here, a man loves a woman, but never manages to experience love at all.

The Road Wife by Eoin McNamee

An irresistible story of modern Europe – long-haul truckers, Russian prostitutes, storms at sea, flood-lit embarcaderos past midnight, pale longing – and death. The language here, the authority, the stark atmospherics are incomparable and by themselves are worth this story’s brief, hectic, melancholy journey.

Storm Glass by Kathleen Murray

A stylish, remarkably confident story that makes a pretty virtue out of the flecks of stark memory and language with which we construct a cohesive past and a saving view of ourselves within it. Narratively, it is a rich and moving variation upon an image – storm – the radiant consequences of which last on far beyond its appointed day.

The Rescue by Susan Stairs

A nervy, tightly compressed, and alarmingly brief story of human extremis: children hurtling to the ends of the too-short tethers connecting them to modern existence. Graceful and knowing in its stripped-out and plumbed bleakness, it is a love story – of a kind – but a kind in which love scarcely avails.

ORANGE PRIZE WINNER

Marilynne Robinson has won the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel Home. The judges' decision was unanimous which is kind of cool, I think. It's certainly nice for Marilynne to know!

Fi Glover, chair of the judges siad: 'This year's Orange Prize winner has a luminous quality to it that has drawn all of the judges to a unanimous decision. The profound nature of the writing stood out, as has the ability of writer to draw the reader into a world of hope expectation, misunderstanding, love and kindness.'

More here.

Publishing Your Book Seminar, Dublin

Something for the week-end (of the 12th and 13th of June, that is) from the Irish Writers' Centre:

Publishing Your Book Seminar
10 a.m. - 4.30 p.m.
Saturday 13th June 2009
Fee: €50

Attention All Writers!

An information day on all aspects of publishing , with speakers Ciara Considine, editor at Hodder Headline; Faith O Grady, Literary Agent; author, June Considine and experts on marketing and publicity.

Whether you are an aspiring writer seeking a publisher, wondering where to start, or interested in knowing more about current market trends, an informative and expert group will speak on these subjects in the Reading Rooms of the Irish Writers’ Centre, 19 Parnell Square, Dublin 1 on Saturday June 13th.

Places are strictly limited so early booking is advisable. Online booking here.

Pat Jourdan reviewed - The Short Review

"At her best, Jourdan has something of William Trevor’s talent for capturing the most intimate instances between people and laying these out for our consideration, without garnish or expectation: a quiet telling." Sarah Hilary

Apt praise from the excellent Sarah Hilary for Pat Jourdan's short story collection Rainy Pavemnets which she has reviewed for the June 2009 issue of The Short Review.
There's a great interview with Pat about short fiction and its writing here.

Pat's a gifted visual artist as well as poet and fiction writer, and I made friends with her in Galway when she lived here. She has an extraordinary mind and her interview gives something of the sparky essence of her way of thinking. Enjoy!