DESNUDO GIVEAWAY

Book giveaway on my Facebook page! One copy of Desnudo (Spanish edition of my short fiction collection Nude) up for grabs. It's a compact hardback with a bronze ribbon bookmark. Very lovely. It is translated by Maximo Alaez, who also did the drawing of the nude for the cover. Multi-talented Max, we call him.

Go here to enter!

NUDE FOR KINDLE - REDUCED!

In honour of the Lines of Vision exhibition, which runs until April 2015 at the National Gallery of Ireland, my art-inspired short story collection Nude (Salt, 2009) is now reduced in price for kindle. It's $3.09 on Amazon.com, and £1.97 on Amazon.co.uk. That's less than €2.50!

♥ NUDE FOR VALENTINE'S DAY - KINDLE OFFER ♥

To celebrate all the lurve and sensuality that Valentine's Day brings, my short story collection Nude is US$2.51 at Amazon.com or GBP£1.53 at Amazon.co.uk for Kindle, today and for the rest of February.

The blurb on Nude: 'The women and men in Nude play out their desires and frustrations from Dublin to Paris, Delhi to Barcelona, and beyond. In these stories there are mercurial lovers, illicit affairs and mistakes that cannot be undone. And at the centre of it all is the unclothed body: in bedrooms, in art, and in and out of love.'

♥ Happy Valentine's Day! ♥

NUDE ON KINDLE

My 2009 published short story collection Nude is now available for Kindle. Yay! With thanks to Salt for giving me permission to digitize it and to my husband for doing all the hard work to get it formatted. It's priced at £4.04 on Amazon.co.uk and US$6.18 on Amazon.com which equates to about €4.65.

Nude was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize, and Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler said of it, 'Nakedness rather than sex is the theme of Nuala Ní Chonchúir's Nude, nakedness and hiding linked like natural opposites, the delicacy of encounters and then the blunt proposition, the subterfuge and the revelation. Over it all is an elegant simplicity of language, a quilt of metaphor. Art and beauty are the threads that hold it together and ravel the lives of her characters. A beautiful collection of stories about beauty.'

BUSY-NESS

 
There is a lot happening in my world these days and I am torn between this, that and the other, busy as busy can be(e). I am having fun reading the stories sent in for my guest editorship of The Stinging Fly. 330 flash stories and 262 longer stories were subbed for the issue so there is a ton of reading to do. There are some absolute gems among the stories - my 'YES' pile is enormous and it is going to be very difficult to trim that down.

I fly out to Delaware in the USA in 10 days or so for a writers' conference run by writer friend Billie Travilini whom I meet at the International Short Story Conference every two years. I have been to lots of cool places in the States and, much as I love NY etc., it is always fascinating to visit smaller, more obscure places like Lewes,a sweet coastal town dubbed 'the first town in the first State'. And it's wonderful to experience these places in the company of other writers.

Other than that I am finishing Novel #3, editing  Novel #2 and prepping for the publication of Of Dublin and Other Fictions - my chapbook of short-shorts/flash that is being published in the USA in September. Cover art has now been secured - I can't wait to reveal it. It is by a Donegal-resident Spanish artist and it is both witty and pretty. The chapbook launch takes place in San Francisco at the American Conference for Irish Studies.

I also had a very productive meeting with the New Island team last week to discuss Novel #2 which will be out next spring. We still haven't locked down the title - I want to use an adapted quote from a poem as the title so I am awaiting permission from Harper Collins in the USA. I got a friendly email from them last week (from an Irish employee!) so I have all fingers crossed that it works out. Again, I hope to reveal the title for that shortly. As the novel is mostly set in Scotland, I have been planning the launch - think whiskey and shortbread and lots of tartan :)

Novel #2 features a paperweight that becomes central to the plot. I own that paperweight and today my friend the photographer Úna Spain is going to photograph it with a view to it being used as cover art for the book. I can't wait to see the images and send them on to New Island to consider.

Also Salt, who published my story collection Nude, have given me permission to digitize the book. I thought it would be a very simple process (it's not really - lots of formatting issues) so my lovely husband has taken over that task and is working on it. Nude for Kindle available very soon! And at a special introductory price.

It's all good.

Nude is a PG CWWN pick

Somebody (thank you, kind person) recommended Nude over at the Postgrad Contemporary Women's Writing Network as a favourite example of contemporary women's short fiction. Look at the other women on the list! I feel like the wide-eyed fan at the party. Lorrie Moore! Maeve Brennan! Daphne du bloody Maurier! Hee hee. That's put a grin on my grumpy gob :)

• Ali Smith – The First Person and Other Stories
• Lorrie Moore – Birds of America (‘What You Want to Do Fine’)
• Emma Donoghue – Astray (‘Onward’, ‘Daddy’s Girl’)
• Jhumpa Lahiri – The Interpreter of Maladies
• Petina Gappah – An Elegy for Easterly
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – The Thing Around Your Neck
• Nicola Barker – Three Button Trick
• Angela Carter – Burning Your Boats
• Margaret Atwood – Good Bones and Murder in the Dark
• Alice Walker – The Complete Stories
• Daphne du Maurier – The Birds and other stories
• Jackie Kay – Reality, Reality
• Maeve Brennan – The Springs of Affections: Stories of Dublin
• Muriel Spark – ‘The Portobello Road’, ‘The Girl I left Behind Me’ & ‘Bang-Bang You’re Dead’
• Lydia Davis – Story and Other Stories
• Amy Hempel – At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom
• Nuala Ní Chonchúir – Nude
• Amy Bloom – A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories

IRISH SHORT STORY WEEK - NUDE DISSECTED

Micheal Farrell's iconic 'Madonna Irlanda' on which I based my story of the same name

Mel Ulm takes a close look at two stories from my collection Nude for his Irish Short Story Week over at The Reading Life today. He examines 'Madonna Irlanda' and 'Mademoiselle O'Murphy'. Mel says, 'I fully endorse Nude to anyone who loves short stories. There is a powerful sensibility that has seen way below the surface of things behind these stories.' See more of what he has to say here.

NUDE - NEW REVIEW

The Parrish Lantern blog, based in the UK, has done a glowing review of my short story collection Nude. One of the joys of blogging is making connections with other literary bloggers and lately that has been happening a lot. Is there a return to blogging? An upsurge brought on by the recession, similar to the renewed interest in crafts and baking? I hope so :) I certainly know that blogging has been good to me over the last four years and more.

My thanks to the people behind The Parrish Lantern. I will be dropping by their blog in late December for the final stop on my virtual tour for The Juno Charm.

NUDE REVIEW, SHINE ON LAUNCH & MANCHESTER COMMENDATION

Mel Ulm has reviewed my short story collection Nude (Salt) on his The Reading Life blog here. A snippet: "I found the stories in Nude to be beautifully written lessons in the nature of the gaze, the meaning of nudity and the lingering power of colonialism partially reinstated in an account of the relationships of men to women and artists to the women who pose nude for them." 

I went to the Shine On anthology launch in Dublin last night and it was a treat - a really warm and positive launch in the opulent surroundings of The Westin Hotel. It was worth the 180 mile mad dash round trip. John Saunders of Shine and Pat Boran of Dedalus Press welcomed each writer and we were given our complimentary copy. What a gorgeous book it is, truly. And its pages are jammed with stunning work from a who's-who of Irish writers, including our soon-to-be President, Michael D. Higgins.

Some contributors gave us a reading: Tony Curtis read a gorgeous poem about Elizabeth Bishop, and Peter Sheridan read a funny non-fic piece about playing Joxer Daly in Juno and the Paycock as a 16 year old. Paula Meehan also read a beautiful, rich poem about grief called 'Diamond Faceted, His Breath'.

Neither Shine nor Dedalus expect to make money from the book - it is an exercise in raising awareness of mental health issues and services - a thing which is relevant to many writers, as Pat B pointed out. He also said - and this is what I adore about anthologies - that 'the book is a snapshot of Irish writing today'. It lets the public know what Irish writers are up to when they are squirreled away, out of view, and not on the promo trail for a book. I love that immediate access to what people are writing, it's thrilling. I was delighted to meet with lots of people I know there including Aifric MacAodha, Billy Ramsell, Paul Perry, Grace Wells, Mark Roper, Gabriel Rosenstock, Michael O'Loughlin and Gráinne Killeen who is doing the PR for the book.

It's a fabulous anthology and I have ordered one to give away here shortly. I ordered it weeks ago and it still hasn't arrived but when it does I will have a give-away. Stay tuned for that.

In other nice news my story 'Queen of Tattoo' was commended in the Manchester Fiction Prize who have just announced their shortlist. There were 1500 entries so to make it to the last round of 40 is pleasing and it gives me renewed confidence in my story. I shall be sending it off again pronto :)

SCOTLAND & NUDES & A WRITING RETREAT

I'm back from my research trip to Scotland and it was a blast. Final research is now done for my novel and I just have to finish it. Woo! I'm off to Annaghmakerrig (The Tyrone Guthrie Centre) for a week to do just that. I am itching to go but first I will be launching Kennys 'NUDE - BLATANT EXHIBITIONISM', a wonderful new art exhibition as part of Galway Arts Festival, tomorrow Saturday 9th July at 2pm in Kennys, Liosbán, Tuam Road, Galway. All welcome!

DRAÍOCHT READING - SAT 16th

I'm reading from my fiction at Draíocht in Blanchardstown, tomorrow night at 7.30pm, as part of Writing 3.0, Fingal's writers' festival. All welcome! It's a free event but you reserve tickets at the site.

NUDE ON EDGE HILL SHORTLIST

I'm off to lovely London again, for the briefest of flying visits in July, because my short fiction collection Nude (Salt, 2009) has been shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. Woop! I'm actually teaching a week-long short fiction worskshop that week at the West Cork Lit Fest, but I am flying over to London in the afternoon and back early the next morning so I won't miss my class. It'll be a mad whirlwind but it's always lovely to attend these events, win or no win. It makes them real.

My fellow listees, congrats to them all, are:

Jeremy Dyson - The Cranes That Build Cranes (Little, Brown)

A L Kennedy - What Becomes (Jonathan Cape)

Jane Feaver - Love Me Tender (Harvill Secker)

Robert Shearman - Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical

The winners will be announced on 8th July at an awards ceremony in Blackwell’s Charing Cross bookstore in London. The prize, now in its fourth year, is the UK’s only award that recognises a published collection of short stories. Co-sponsored by Blackwell, the 2010 prize has three categories: the £5,000 main prize; ; the £1,000 Readers' Prize; and a new prize for a student on Edge Hill University's MA Creative Writing course.

More here at The Bookseller and at Irish Publishing News.

NUDE ON EDGE HILL LONGLIST - WOOP!

I'm delighted that my short story collection Nude (Salt, 2009) is on the longlist for the Edge Hill Prize.

The Edge Hill Short Story Prize, now in its third year, is the UK's only literary award that recognises a published collection of short stories, and this year they have announced a longlist of 18 titles, which will be whittled down to a shortlist. The shortlist of 5 will be announced on the 8th of May.

The links are to reviews on The Short Review website. More here.

• Regi Claire - Fighting It (Two Ravens Press).
• David Constantine - The Sheiling (Comma Press). 
• Jeremy Dyson - The Cranes that Build Cranes (Little Brown). 
• Jane Feaver - with Love Me Tender (Random House).
• Patrick Gale - Gentleman's Relish (Harper Collins).
• Sian Hughes - The Beach Hut (Biscuit Publishing). 
• Mark Illis - Tender (Salt Publishing). 
• A.L. Kennedy - What Becomes (Jonathan Cape).
• Tom Lee - Greenfly (Harvill Secker).
• Michael J Farrell - Life in the Universe (The Stinging Fly). 
• Ben Moor - More Trees To Climb (Portobello). 
• Nuala Ní Chonchúir - Nude (Salt Publishing).
• Philip O Ceallaigh - The Pleasant Light of Day (Penguin).
• Robert Shearman - Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical(Big Finish)
• Charles Stross - Wireless (Little Brown).
• Craig Taylor - One Million Tiny Plays About Britain (Bloomsbury).
• Douglas Thompson - Ultrameta (Eibonvale Press).
• Simon Van Booy - Love Begins in Winter (Beautiful Books).

WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

I have a story in/on World Literature Today a classy-looking magazine produced by the University of Oklahoma (O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A, yeow!). The start of the story is in the print mag and the whole lot is available in handy PDF format online here.

The story is called 'From Life' and it was to be in Nude but it's a long story and the book was too big in the end, so instead it will appear in the reprint of To The World of Men, Welcome where it will fit nicely. It's set in Dublin and Paris, pre Celtic Tiger, when Dublin was lovely and scruffy and Paris was...well, Paris!

VALENTINE'S 'NUDE' GIVEAWAY IN NEW YORK

 

'Dreaming of Heathcliff' - a painting by Sandy Mastroni

Happy Valentine's Day, lovely readers!! I love this day: romance, heart-shaped everythings (pasta! buns!), chocolate coming out my ears, pretty cards, maybe even wee prezzies.

To celebrate all things love-like and sensuous, I'm over at Eimear Ryan's blog in New York here for an interview about my short fiction collection Nude, which is all about the body and art and sensuality.

Eimear is very generously giving away a copy of the book and a gorgeous red mug from the Strand Bookstore. To be in with a chance to win you have to read the interview first (heh heh) then do what she asks. Think literary crushes...

NUDE IN REVIEW #5

Later on today, I am at Eimear's blog (as mentioned previously) for an interview about my short fiction collection Nude. I'll post again to direct you there.

Coincidentally, two other Nude related things have also just occurred:

1. Lane Ashfeldt writer and editor at Pulp (which is currently on a break) has put a mini review on her site here.

2. Irish writer Ethel Rohan who lives in San Francisco has written a very moving piece called 'Nude: A Personal Essay' here.

Neither piece is very long, both are worth reading. Thanks Lane and Ethel.

NUDE ON VALENTINE'S DAY

On Sunday - Valentine's Day - I head to New York (virtually - sigh) to wunderkind Eimear Ryan's blogspot for an interview about my newest short fiction collection, Nude.

Eimear is a hot young Irish writer who is currently holed up in Brooklyn, writing and writing and writing. She won a Hennessy Award last year and she is destined for BIG things. You heard it here first.

Eimear plans to give away stuff - a copy of Nude and either a bag or a mug from the fabulous Strand Bookstore. Do join us for talk of love (of short fiction), literary crushes and e-books, amongst lots more.

I did spend Valentine's Day in New York two years ago with two of my favourite men, as it happens. It was bliss. The men? Mr Nuala and Rufus, of course! Happy days, as the young people say.

NUDE IN REVIEW #4

Nude was reviewed in Verbal Magazine in December. It is decently erotic, according to the reviewer Seán Mac Mahon! The pdf version has just been posted online here. The review is on page 27.

Here's a little extract (the best bit, naturally!):

"Of all literary genres writing about sex is the most difficult, having to find a path between the gross and the comic. The triumph of the author is that unhappy or distracted as her characters are their stories are told with an odd dignity and absolute conviction."

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!!

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.