WEST CORK LIT FEST - TWO GIGS

I head to Bantry tomorrow for the West Cork Literary Festival and my two gigs on Monday the 13th - my first billed as Nuala O'Connor.

Firstly, Coffee and a Chat in beautiful Bantry House at 10am with Siobhán Burke. €10.

Secondly, Reading and Q&A with Mary Morrissy at 1pm, Bantry Library. Free!

BANTRY, VIENNA & GALWAY NOW

 
A swift reminder that the Seán Ó Faoláin Prize closes for entries on the 31st July so you still have time to polish that story and send it in. Apart from the fact there are 6 prizes, you get to read at the Cork Short Story Festival which is the best festival EVER. It was announced by Munster Lit and the festival yesterday, btw, that young skin Colin Barrett has won the 2014 Frank O'Connor Award, which is very impressive for a début book. Kudos, Colin.

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I had a lovely time in Bantry, teaching at the West Cork Lit Fest - I met with a fine bunch of aspiring bloggers/Facebookers/Tweeters. The time flew, we had fun. What more could you want? I enjoyed readings too by the wondrous John MacKenna, the sublime Mary Morrissy and the winners of the FISH awards, including Dublin man, David Butler, a fellow New Islander, who took the top prize.

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I'm off to Vienna tomorrow for the International Conference on the Short Story, which I have been attending, in its various locations, since 2006. I'm taking part in a panel on linked short story collections on Weds 16th; reading from Of Dublin and Other Fictions at the Irish Embassy on Thurs 17th; and reading from Mother America, with I-Wei Wu from Taiwan, on Fri 18th. It is a great conference and I am so looking forward to catching up with old friends including Tania Hershman, Billie Travalini and Bob and Kelly Butler. So ta-rah for now. If I get a moment, I will blog from Vienna.

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If you live in the Wesht, I am interviewed in the current issue (Jul./Aug.) of Galway Now magazine about The Closet of Savage Mementos and about what Galway means to me.

MARY MORRISSY INTERVIEW

Writer Mary Morrissy

Happy new year, blog readers. I wish you all creativity and prosperity in 2014. I want to kick the year off as I mean to continue: featuring fabulous writers. I am delighted to start this first day of the year with one of my literary heroines, Mary Morrissy. Her new novel The Rising of Bella Casey is published by Brandon and it is a re-imagining of the life of playwright Sean O'Casey's sister Bella. The novel is beautifully written and moving; one of my top reads of 2013.

Mary is originally from Dublin and has won many awards for her fiction. She is the author of three novels, Mother of Pearl, The Pretender and The Rising of Bella Casey, and a collection of short stories, A Lazy Eye. She has taught creative writing at university level in the US and Ireland for the past decade and is also an individual literary mentor. She currently teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at University College Cork. Mary blogs here.

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Welcome, Mary. Your novel The Rising of Bella Casey has been well received, gaining excellent reviews in The Irish Times and on RTE's Arena programme, among other places. Tell me about the genesis of the book.

Thanks, Nuala, for the invite to appear on your blog. I first came across Bella Casey’s story in The Glamour of Grammar, an academic book on Sean O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy, by Colbert Kearney – who also happens to be my better half. He made reference to Bella’s life and the fact that O’Casey had written his sister out of his autobiographies. I can still remember the moment, and that special tingle you get when you recognize the spark that will ignite your next novel.

A novel like this takes a lot of research. How did you enjoy the research process and how did you conduct it?

I started off by reading O’Casey’s six volumes of autobiography, as well as his three volumes of letters.  I also read the many biographies of the playwright. I was lucky enough to be awarded a research fellowship at the Cullman Centre for Writers and Scholars at the New York Public Library, where a lot of O’Casey’s papers are held, including fragments that he cut from his autobiographies regarding Bella. Because I was surrounded by so much research material at the NYPL, I approached Bella in a different way. Usually I write first, then do the research; this time I did the research first. Normally I don’t like research but you couldn’t possibly not enjoy working at the haven that is the NYPL.  

I learnt a lot reading the book – I wasn’t aware that Seán O’Casey was a Protestant, for example. What is the novelist’s responsibility to the truth, especially when there are real people involved?

Protestantism is crucial to understanding O’Casey – and Bella – if only to understand how far O’Casey travelled from his roots. Here’s a man who became a nationalist, Irish speaker, socialist, communist and atheist and who wrote in complete opposition to his own tribe. As for responsibility to the truth, I think what the novelist should be most concerned with is emotional truth. I have a rule of thumb about writing about real people – which I’ve done a lot of. Where the facts are known you should stay faithful to them; where they’re not you are free to invent.

I loved Bella. Her fall from grace – though she always retained a pretence of dignity – was hard to witness. Were parts of the novel difficult to write, in an emotional way?

It was all difficult to write! This novel had a long, hard genesis. But there were times when I felt a little like O’Casey in dread of Bella’s decline. I wasn’t just witnessing the decline but actively subjecting her to all sorts of trials and tribulations. But apart from the attentions of the wicked Reverend Leeper, which is speculative on my part, all of Bella’s other misfortunes were true, so I had to stay true to them.

Reverend Leeper is a convincing villain; Bella’s husband is also not an endearing man. And Seán comes off as self-focused and lacking in empathy. Is this essentially a book about gender and women’s lack of choice?

Well, I’m glad to hear that the Reverend Leeper is convincing as he is the only one of the  main characters in the novel who is totally invented. (O’Casey mentions in passing in his autobiographies a reverend at Bella’s school who was demanding, but it is not specified in which way; this provided me with a narrative opening to create Leeper.) Bella’s husband, Nick, is brutish but I hope that readers might feel some empathy for him given that he, too, is trapped by circumstances. O’Casey was what we would consider very judgemental about Bella’s fall from grace but you have to remember he was an Edwardian man with the morals of that era. My feeling about his rendering of Bella in his autobiographies is that he adored his sister and when he wrote about her he was fuelled by a savage disappointment in how her life had turned out. There’s no doubting that the novel is feminist in that it focuses on the plight of a well-educated young woman who can’t save herself because of the society she finds herself in. But I like to think it’s also about the men in that society who were similarly ensnared by lack of education and poverty. 

     

The cover, which is lovely, shows Sinéad Cusack in the 2011 Abbey Theatre production of Juno and the Paycock. Did O’Casey base Juno on Bella?

The photograph by Mark Douet is beautifully atmospheric, isn’t it? I can’t say for sure that O’Casey based Juno on Bella – I think it more likely that O’Casey’s mother, to whom he was devoted, was the model for Juno. But there are certainly elements of Bella in the younger female characters in O’Casey’s plays. Take Mary Boyle, for example – an idealistic young woman whose ambitions are dashed when she finds herself pregnant. Nora Clitheroe’s romantic notions in The Plough and the Stars owe something to Bella, and Susie Monican in The Silver Tassie has some of Bella’s haughty high-mindedness. And Bessie Burgess in The Plough as the sole Protestant in the tenement could well have been a nod to Bella in her later years.

The language of the book is fantastic – a lively Dublinese peppers the pages. Did you have fun recreating the bawdy, colourful language of early 20th Century Dublin?

I picked up a lot of the vernacular of the novel from O’Casey’s plays, the tone in particular. For Bella, I used a more formal diction and ran fragments of Shakespeare through her speech to indicate her schooling and her cultural aspirations. That was less of a stretch since my own parents would frequently smuggle Shakespeare into their everyday conversation and it took me years to realise where those quotations came from. 

Why do you write?

Because I can’t not.

What is your writing process – morning or night – longhand or laptop?

First draft in longhand and late afternoon into the night. I was a night worker for years and I still keep those kind of hours.

You write short fiction as well as novels. How do you find the writing of shorter vs longer work?

I found the transition from short stories to the novel really difficult. After years of compressing language and time, as the short form demands, it was a real struggle to maintain a narrative over 250 pages. Now after writing several novels, I find that my stories are much longer than they used to be.

Who are your favourite women writers and why?

Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor because I found them in my teens and they excited my passion for fiction. Alice Munro for the density and complexity she has given the short story form. Elizabeth Hardwick and Shirley Hazzard for the way they wield language. 

What one piece of advice would you offer beginning writers?

Write a little and often.

What are you working on now?

I’ve just finished a collection of linked short stories and have started work on a new novel – but it’s too early to talk about it.

Thanks so much to you, Mary, for the interview. Readers, you can buy Mary's wonderful novel here. And check out her blog for lots more interesting insights into the book and its making.

CHATTAHOOCHEE REVIEW GIVEAWAY

The special Irish issue of The Chattahoochee Review is out now. Stories from the inimitable Mary Morrissy, Máire T. Robinson and myself. Drama and poetry too (Matthew Sweeney!), and fabulous illustrations from Clifden-based artist Gavin Lavelle.

I have two copies and so I want to give one away to you, dear readers. It is rather a weighty issue so this giveaway is confined to Ireland (sorry international readers - postage costs are on my mind). So, leave a comment here saying you want to be included in the draw and I will put your name in the hat. Simple as that. Good luck!

ARKANSAS BOUND

Irish writer Jamie O'Connell who will feature at the International Conference on the Short Story in Arkansas this week

Well, I'm off to Amerikay. Arkansas to be precise. To the International Conference on the Short Story to be even more precise. This will be my fourth time at the conference which takes place in a different city every second year. So far I've been to Lisbon in 2006, then Cork and in 2010, Toronto. I am stoked to be going to Arkansas. I am reliably informed by Dr Maurice Lee, the conference director, that the temps are 'hot, hot, hot' just now.

I am on two panels while there: one on flash fiction, the other on the Irish short story (oh what a vast and sticky subject). I am also reading with the delightful Katie Singer. Can't wait! And I can't wait to see my pals Tania Hershman, Sylvia Petter, Paddy O'Reilly, Ann Luttrell and Mary Costello. And to make the proper acquaintance of fellow Irish writers Molly McCloskey, Mary Morrissy and new-kid-on-the-block, Jamie O'Connell.

Early on Tuesday it's bye bye rainy Ballinasloe, hello sunny Little Rock :) I will blog from there if I have the wit and/or the time.

'NEW TRICKS WITH MATCHES' - LIT COMPS

Fiction judge, Mary Morrissy

There are two very fine judges for the UCD MA in Creative Writing Anthology Contest: Paul Perry for poetry and Mary Morrissy for fiction. I bought Mary's short story collection A Lazy Eye when I was just starting to write short stories myself and loved it. Mary will be in Arkansas at the International Short Story Conference, which I am also taking part in, so I am looking forward to spending some time with her there.

Here is the info on these two comps:

The annual UCD MA in Creative Writing Anthology Contest is currently accepting submissions. Categories include the short story and poetry, one winner will be chosen from each. The competition is open to ALL writers. Work must be previously unpublished. Entry is online only and the prize is publication.

Closing date: 30th of April 2012

Each winning entry, along with the entrant's short biography will be published in the Class of 2012 anthology New Tricks with Matches which will be distributed at Dublin-area literary events, local bookshops, as well as online. 'There are no requirements as to subject matter, only originality,' the competition organisers say.

Queries: newtrickswithmatches@gmail.com

Short story competition:

Max 2000 words
Entry fee: €7 or two for €10
Unlimited number of entries allowed

Poetry competition:

Max 40 lines
Entry fee: €7 or two for €10
Unlimited number of entries allowed

For more see here.