AN ALL-WOMAN SHORT FIC S'LIST

Well looky, looky.

It's an all-woman short list for this year's BBC National Short Story Award which was previously won by Clare Wigfall and Julian Gough.

The shortlist is:

Other People's Gods by Naomi Alderman

The Not-Dead and the Saved by Kate Clanchy

Moss Witch by Sara Maitland

Hitting Trees With Sticks by Jane Rogers

Exchange Rates by Lionel Shriver

The winner will be announced on the evening of Monday, 7th December.

More here.

SHORT CIRCUIT - a guide to the Art of the Short Story

With all the to'ing and fro'ing of the last few weeks, I haven't had a chance to mention Short Circuit, Salt Publishing's guide to writing the short story. I have an essay in there on style. There are contributions from Clare Wigfall, Tania Hershman, Vanessa Gebbie, Lane Ashfeldt, Alison Macleod, Matthew Licht and Tobias Hill, among many others.

The book will arrive at this blog on its virtual tour at some point in the not too distant future in the arms of its very able editor, Vanessa Gebbie.

It is a LARGE volume, comprehensive in nature and nicely varied. It would make a lovely Christmas pressie for your local friendly short story nut. It has a 20% discount on the retail price at the mo, so is a recession friendly £11.99 stg.

Buy it here at Salt's site.

NUDE'S DUBLIN LAUNCH - PICS

Barbara Smith and Nuala


Various nudes from the Naked Ambition exhibition


Teresa Cooney, Eta Carney and Hugh O'Connor


Female nude - Naked Ambition


Men with nudes


Declan and Saoirse Kenny


Writers Akis Makris and Kate Thompson


Karen O'Neill


Writers Aiden O'Reilly and Kathleen Murray

Wednesday night was the final launch of Nude. It took place in Dublin in the NGG gallery, with a backdrop of beautiful art from the Three Rock Art Group called 'Naked Ambition'. Serendipitous, or what?
Thanks so much to all those who turned up. Major thanks to Barbara Smith who gave a wonderful, blush-inducing speech - the book is well and truly launched now. Go raibh maith agaibh, one and all!!

DERWENT POETRY FESTIVAL - A REVIEW

The Derwent Poetry Festival was fantastic: relaxed and friendly and there were lots and lots of women poets reading, which made a refreshing change from many literary festivals.


Friday night kicked off in Masson Mills with the presentations to the four 2009 Templar Poetry pamphlet winners (of which I’m one) and a reading from Pat Winslow.

Masson Mills is an enormous textile mill which has has been converted into a shopping area and conference suites. It lies just outside the Victorian spa resort of Matlock Bath which is situated more or less in a gorge. The whole place is stunning: stone-cut houses, the impressive gorge over the river, sweet little souvenir shops, Victorian bandstands and foot-bridges. It is a gorgeous place to hold a poetry festival. And in nearby Cromford, there is a fabulous, quirky bookshop called Scarthin Books that has a café with veggie food and vegan cake. Vegan cake! It was made for us...


As a former actress, Pat Winslow read beautifully and I enjoyed her poetry which featured, among many things, salt, flits to France and some work based on her experience of working in prisons. Sample here.

With baby in tow, I didn’t get to every reading but I got to as much as I could. My own reading was on the Saturday afternoon with fellow pamphlet winner, Omagh native Dawn Wood. Dawn is a very engaging and warm reader. She is a scientist by profession (in a Dundee university) and she read beautiful science-inspired poetry about everything from hummingbird names to taxidermy.


Poets Dawn Wood, Paul Maddern, me, Katrina Naomi

I read exclusively from my pamphlet Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car, which was unusual and fun, as many of the poems are quite recent. I will be giving away copies here next week, so stay tuned!

Belfast resident, Bermuda born Paul Maddern – another pamphlet winner – read later on in the day; I thoroughly enjoyed his poetry which was full of rich, unusual language; some of the poems were very moving and they were packed with the colour and vibrancy of the landscape in Bermuda.

The Irish feature strongly on Templar Poetry’s list, and Saturday night saw two more Irish poets take the floor: Maggie O’Dwyer from Dublin and Enniskillen man Nigel McLoughlin. Both read wonderfully well – I laughed out loud at some of the wry and often hilarious moments in both of their work. Maggie was launching her first full collection and she stated that ‘First collections are about the past’, which I am inclined to agree with. Like her pamphlet, which won last year’s competition, her collection Laughter Heard from the Road, is full of slant humour, colour, pear trees and wafts of cigarette smoke. My only complaint about Maggie’s reading was that it was too short – I could’ve listened to her for ages.

Nigel started his reading by saying it was great to read to an audience that loves poetry but also scary. ‘What if they don’t like the work?’ he worried. He needn’t have fretted – we loved the work. He read many beautiful, crafted poems featuring his family, including the stunning poem ‘Topography’ where he and his sons’ and wife’s bodies make mountains in ‘the Ireland of the bed’. Nigel’s language is sparky and fresh and his poems are incredibly well made.

The last full reading I attended was the last reading of the festival, featuring Scottish poet Angela Cleland and Katrina Naomi from London. Angela leans towards performance poetry and she has a confident, conversational style. She talked about how at readings everything you say and do can be taken away and used by the other poets, and then read a poem about a striking woman at a lit event, whom she had ‘stolen’ for a poem.

Katrina Naomi

Katrina Naomi’s poetry is very much my cup of tea: it is dark, concise, blackly humorous and zinging with life. Katrina’s personal style is genteel rockabilly and she looked fabulous in a purple 1940’s dress which was gifted to her by a member of last year’s Derwent Festival audience! Don’t you just love the nice things that happen via poetry?! Katrina is currently writer-in-res at Haworth, home of the Brontë sisters. She read from her new collection The Girl with the Cactus Handshake and a stand-out poem for me was ‘Tunnel of Love’ which is set in Dreamland, her local childhood amusement park in Margate. It’s a sharp poem about male vanity and teenage love/lust-angst. I loved all of her work and her reading was a great ending to what was a fantastic, warm-hearted festival. All credit to Templar Poetry’s main man, Alex Mc Millen.

Alex McMillen - publisher, Templar Poetry

Two things to note:
1) Templar publish the literary magazine Iota and there is still time to enter their first poetry competition here.

2) Next year’s pamphlet and collection competition will be judged by Pat Winslow. I will advertise it here as soon as details become available.

Portrait of the Artist with a Red...Vehicle?!


Thanks, once again, to Culture Ireland for funding!

NEW 'NUDE' REVIEW & 2 LAUNCHES

INVITE TO GERALDINE MILLS'S LAUNCH - click image to read

NEW NUDE REVIEW
Marc Schuster at Small Press Reviews has given Nude a positive review here.

LAUNCH #1 - DUBLIN - NUDE
Nude will be launched tomorrow night, Wednesday the 25th November in Dublin at the NGG Gallery, Temple Bar Cultural Trust, 12 East Essex Street, between 6pm and 8pm.
All book and art lovers welcome.
There will be wine, the book to be bought-n-signed (€10 only!), a short reading and a launch speech from writer Barbara Smith.

LAUNCH #2 - GALWAY - AN URGENCY OF STARS
Meanwhile, in Galway, my friend Geraldine Mill's newest poetry collection from Arlen House, An Urgency of Stars will be launched on Thursday evening in Galway City Library by Josephine Vahey at 6pm. There will be wine, the book for sale and a reading. All welcome.

BACK FROM DERWENT & MELUSINE POEMS

A quick post to say I am back in half-a-piece and one book richer from the Derwent Poetry Festival which was magical, fun, relaxed and wonderful. (Half-a-piece because me and The Baby both have colds and are exhausted - but happy!) I will catch up with you all later.

Our town has suffered in the floods so there is all sorts of issues with school closures, no drinking water etc. to be getting on with. Plus the Dublin launch of Nude is on Wednesday. No rest for the wicked or the sick...

I hope to write a proper report on the festival asap. Meanwhile, I have two poems on the Melusine AKA Woman in the 21st Century site, an online journal of literature and art by women (but not only women) about women here.

COLUM MCCANN WINS NAT. BOOK AWARD IN USA

I'm thrilled that Colum McCann has won the National Book Award for fiction in the USA for Let the Great World Spin. The novel was one of my favourite reads of this year; I'm a sucker for books set in New York, anyway, but this one is just brilliant. It's a very un-novel-like novel, set up as it is as linked short stories. What the American calls a 'story cycle'.

All the stories are fascinating and Colum's language sings and zings off the page, as usual. I've been a fan of his for as long as he's been publishing books and I was disappointed that lesser books got on the Man Booker list. He said in an interview that he was disappointed about that too. How's that for honesty?

By coincidence I'm re-reading Fishing the Sloe Black River for my book club. My book club is great - they are open to reading anything and everything.

On receiving the award Colum said: 'As fiction writers and people who believe in the word, we have to enter the anonymous corners of human experience to make that little corner right.' Love it!

Ah, I just adore it when literary books get their due recognition. I especially adore it when it's one of our amazing contemporary Irish writers. Go Colum!

More in the NY Times here.

MAGMA'S FUN POETRY-THEMED COMP

Inspired by the pulping of a school English anthology which contained an allegedly vicious poem by Carol Ann Duffy, there's a bit of a fun competition going on over at Magma.

They want you to suggest a poem that should be banned from appearing on the (UK) school syllabus and explain why. The best entry will receive an un-pulped copy of the anthology containing Carol Ann's goldfish-drowning poem and a year’s subscription to Magma.

See here for more!

PAMPHLET LAUNCH & READING - IN SASANA

I'm off to England on Friday for the Derwent Poetry Festival in Matlock Bath where I will receive my Templar Poetry Award on Friday night - my published pamphlet Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car and a handsome cheque.
I will also read on Saturday with fellow-winner Dawn Wood.

I'm so excited to be going away. 'You need to get off the island every so often,' someone said to me recently. It will do me good to get away from my desk, the house and general baby-related chores. I'm looking forward to meeting my fellow winners, Alex McMillen who runs Templar Poetry and anyone else who is there.
Report when I get back, hopefully!

Big thanks to Culture Ireland for the funding which makes it possible for me to go. Go raibh maith agaibh!

WRITING SPIRIT AWARD - closing soon!

There's just two weeks* left to enter the FREE TO ENTER Writing Spirit Award over at Writing4All. There's a not-to-be-sniffed at €1000 top prize.

This short fiction writing competition is open to all Writing4all members. So you just join the site and then you can enter. Easy peasy.

Word count: 750 up to 4000 words

Closing date for entries: 30th November 2009*

Prizes: First: €1000 Second: €300 Third: €150

Result: by 21st December - a nice Xmas prezzie!

All you need to know is here.

* JUST IN: THIS HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO 31st DEC!
NEW: Judge: Nadine O'Regan - books ed of The Sunday Business Post

A MAXIMUS MIRACLE IN GALWAY - WELCOME LIZ

I want you all to give a céad míle fáilte to the lovely Liz Gallagher who is stopping by for her Maximus Miracle book tour with her Salt-published poetry collection, The Wrong Miracle. Liz lives in Gran Canaria and in order to celebrate an Irish homecoming for her and The Wrong Miracle, Liz is offering a free copy of the collection (posted to anywhere in the world!) to readers of Women Rule Writer.

All you have to do, to be included in the draw, is mention the interview, book and draw on your blog and/or on Facebook and confirm that you have done so in the comments box here from today. (Or at TFE's blog from the 19th of Nov.). The draw will take place on the 25th of November over at Liz’s blog Musings.

All royalties from Liz’s collection go to SANDS, the stillbirth and neo-natal death charity.

So now, readers, pour that tea, grab that scone and pull up a chair.

N: First of all welcome to my blog, Liz, on your Maximus Miracle Virtual Tour with The Wrong Miracle. Many congrats on the new book – it is an inspiring read. This is my first ever bloggy interview and I’m delighted that you are my guest. So settle down there by the fire and prepare for some woman-centred questioning.

L: Nuala, thanks for the welcome and for having me here, it is a real pleasure, it's great being back here in Galway. I have fond memories of being here during the September heatwave. And now, in autumn, the cosy fire-side setting is ideal for some woman-centred questioning...fire-away!

N: Liz, some of your poetry reminds me of the work of Belfast poet Medbh McGuckian – specifically the surreal nature of many pieces in the book and also the linguistic acrobatics. Would you feel an affinity with Medbh? Are there other Irish women poets who inspire you?

L: I have read some of Medbh's work and like it a lot but must say that I haven't really explored an awful lot of her work....but will do so now out of curiosity...thanks. : )
Irish women poets whose work I know quite well and who would inspire me would be Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Leontia Flynn, Rita Anne Higgins and Mairead Byrne. I also really like Colette Bryce and when I first started reading poetry in the late 80's, I loved Sara Berkeley's work, especially Penn and Home Movie Nights...I haven't read her work in a long while though so not sure what I would think of it now.

N: Maya Angelou said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” How would you like people to feel on reading and/or hearing your poetry? And – a sneaky sub-question – who do you write for?

L: To answer your sub-question first, Nuala, I definitely start out writing for me – to amuse, surprise and entertain myself...and then when the honeymoon period of me and brand new poem is over...I try to look at it with fresh eyes in order to think of how it will fare on its own with other readers and without me on standby to defend it. It is at this stage that I take a close look at what is working or not working... I try not to lose what got me excited in the first place...there is a fine line between doing that and making a poem ready for others' consumption. So, essentially, I am aware of audience but that awareness doesn't come into play until after I have written the first draft or so.

Regarding how I'd like people to feel on reading/hearing my work, good question, Nuala...naturally, I'd like people to be able to 'click' with my poems, one of the really great things about doing the readings in Ireland during the summer was getting feedback from the audience and hearing them say that they could relate to what I was saying. I think there are a lot of emotions at play in my work and knowing that a reader or listener could maybe feel that emotion or a version of that emotion on hearing or reading the work would be very rewarding for me.
I'd also love for people to feel amused and surprised. Humour is important for me in my work and it's great when people 'get' that humour and read between the lines...

N: You are, obviously, an accomplished poet. Do you also write fiction? Who are your favourite female fiction writers?

L: Thanks, Nuala. I have written flash-fiction, 100, 150 and 200 word pieces and I've had some flash-fiction published in an Anthology by Guildhall Press titled: The Wonderful World of Worders edited by Jenni Doherty.
I have written some non-fiction pieces and have had some published. I would love to attempt to write a short story or two but have not yet had the discipline nor time to sit down and try it ….but maybe some day...
Some of my favourite female fiction writers, apart from yourself, Nuala, and Vanessa Gebbie, another Salt writer whose work I love, would be Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, Flannery O' Connor, Amy Tan, Anne Enright, Edna O'Brien and Marian Keyes...got to just love her humour and style.

N: Thanks so much, Liz, for your time and for stopping by at my blog. Good luck with the rest of the tour. Next week Liz will be at The People's Lost Republic of Eejit with the inimitable TFE.

L: Nuala, thanks very much for your hospitality and for such great questions which I thoroughly enjoyed answering. It's been fun. Hope to catch up with you again next summer!


Liz and baby Juno at Flatlake, summer 2009

LIZ GALLAGHER'S IMPENDING VISIT

Make sure to swing by here on Thursday to meet Irish poet Liz Gallagher when I interview her on her Maximus Miracle Virtual Book Tour.

Liz lives in the Canary Islands but originally hails from Donegal. She's a fellow Salt author and I'm looking forward to cosying down for a chat with her on the 12th.

BALLINASLOE LAUNCH OF NUDE

Geraldine Mills (writer), Nuala and Joyce Little (artist)


Me - signing Nude

The launch went great last night - lots of people there, lots of good chat, wine and food.
Thanks to Geraldine Mills for launching the book and Joyce's exhibition Body Image with such grace; thanks to Joyce for hosting the launch in her wonderful Tosnú Art Gallery; and to Karen for selling the books and taking pics; thanks to everyone who came and made the night so much fun.

I'll be doing it all again in the No Grants Gallery in Temple Bar on Wednesday the 25th of November at 6pm - I hope many more of you will make it to that launch.

DERWENT POETRY FESTIVAL

JUNO WRITING A POEM...

The 3rd Derwent Poetry Festival takes place at Masson Mills, Matlock Bath from the 20th - 22nd November 2009.
It celebrates the publication of 4 new Templar Poetry Pamphlets, including my pamphlet Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car; some new collections and the Templar Poetry Anthology.

My reading is on the Saturday:
1.45 - 2.30pm
Pamphlet Poets Reading: 1
Two of the four winning poets from the
2009 Templar Poetry Pamphlet & Collection
Competition: 2009, Judged by Tim Liardet

Dawn Wood reads from Connoisseur
Nuala Ní Chonchúir reads from Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car

Thanks to Culture Ireland for funding my trip across the water.

'How Not to Run a Literary Festival' - Amanda Craig

Very interesting post on Amanda Craig's blog 'How Not to Run a Literary Festival'. Festival organisers take notes. Please.

GALWAY LAUNCH OF NUDE

My new short story collection Nude (Salt, 2009) is being launched this Saturday, the 7th of November, in the Tosnú Art Gallery in Ballinasloe at 7.30pm, along with Body Image an art exhibition by Joyce Little.

Super writer Geraldine Mills is performing the launch; I'll do a short reading and there'll be lots of wine and nibbles to guzzle.

Nude will be for sale at the bargainous, Xmas prezzie friendly price of €10. I'll even sign it!

This is launch 2 of 3, and the final one will take place in Dublin on the 25th November at 6pm in the No Grants Gallery, Temple Bar.

I look forward to seeing you all in Galway or Dublin.

LAST STOP AUSTRALIA

Today I'm at Merc's World - the blog home of writer Sylvia Petter - for the last stop on my virtual tour. I thought I'd be glad but actually I'm sad it's all over, sniff sniff.

Merc usually resides in Vienna but at the moment she's at home in her native Australia, so my tour has circumnavigated the globe in true world tour style, from New Zealand to Ireland and the UK several times, to Switzerland, Norway and the USA, all the way back to the Antipodes and Oz. It's been fun. Thanks to those who followed it all.

We talk about smells (?), workshopping and how I found the tour here

REVIVAL - CALL FOR POETRY SUBS

Revival, the poetry journal of the WhiteHousePoets, is calling for submissions from local, national and international poets for the next issue which will be published in Limerick, January 2010.

The deadline for submissions is the 30th Nov 2009

Send to: The Editor, Revival, Moravia, Glenmore Ave., Roxboro Rd., Limerick.

Email: revival1@eircom.net

Submission guidelines here.