The Stinging Fly

Some very good news this week as Kevin Barry makes his New Yorker debut with a new short story, ‘Fjord of Killary’. The story appears in the February 1st edition and can be read online here:

Well done to Kevin. Now that he’s made it there, he can make it anywhere…

And there is more good news… Kevin’s first novel, City of Bohane, will be published next year by Jonathan Cape.

And more… A production of his own adaptation of the stories from his debut collection, There Are Little Kingdoms, is being staged in Washington D.C. at the Keegan Theatre in March this year.

There Are Little Kingdoms was first published in 2007 and was named a book of the year by The Irish Times, The Sunday Tribune and Metro. It also earned Kevin the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature that year.

to one and all…

As is our wont, we are now accepting submissions up until the end of March. Guidelines here:

http://www.stingingfly.org/submissions.html

The launch of Davy Byrnes Stories takes place next Wednesday evening (Nov 25th) in the Irish Writers’ Centre, 19 Parnell Square, at 7p.m. All are welcome.
Copies of the book will be going out to bookshops early next week and can also be ordered online from us.

We’re also offering it as part of this year’s Christmas Offer.

And for our last event of the year, we’re organising a second Fly By Night extravaganza. Join us on December 9th in the Odessa Club for readings, music and more. We’ll be there 8pm until late. Admission is €10, tickets will be on the door.

The Winter 2009-10 issue is out now. Lots of good stuff packed inside.

And we’ve just sent our latest book to the printers. Davy Byrnes Stories features the six stories short-listed for the 2009 Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award. It will be out by the end of the month. More anon…

We’re delighted to have had Life In The Universe by Michael J. Farrell selected as one of thirty titles which will feature in the first ever Great Irish Book Week promotion.

Great Irish Book Week is an initiative of Publishing Ireland and is aimed at boosting the book publishing and book selling sectors. The hope is that this campaign will highlight the fantastic range of books on offer from Irish book publishers.

Great Irish Book Week will run from Saturday October 24th to Saturday October 31st. Find out more here.

Novel Writing Workshop with Sean O’Reilly

We are looking for writers in the early stages of a novel who feel they will benefit from a relationship with a group of others engaged in the same process. The group (of no more than ten writers) under the direction of acclaimed novelist and short story writer Sean O’Reilly will meet once a week in a workshop setting over a six-month period. This will require a serious long-term commitment from all participants.

At each evening workshop, two participating writers will present their work in progress to the rest of the group for close scrutiny. Everyone will have read and thought deeply about the work beforehand.

Note that there will be no attempt to impose a rationalised schema of creative writing exercises. The writing up for discussion each week is the raw material; any questions of novelistic technique or prose style will arise naturally from the work itself. If you are writing a novel, then you will have ten close readers to respond to every stage of its development. The group will also be reading and analysing a number of “first” novels by contemporary writers.

Over the course of the six months, each writer can look forward to having their work on the table on at least four occasions. In this way, the group will witness and contribute to the development of all the novels in progress. The ultimate aim is for each participant to complete (yes!) a strong first draft of his/her novel. 

Alongside the workshops, on one Saturday every month, there will be a series of specialist talks on issues around the process of writing and the imagination.

The group discussions will be led and overseen by the writer Sean O’Reilly. His published work includes: Curfew and Other Stories, the novels Love and Sleep and The Swing of Things, and Watermark (with The Stinging Fly Press.)  O’Reilly has a wealth of experience facilitating fiction workshops, as Writer-in-Residence with Fingal County Council, Dublin City Council and IADT/Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council amongst others.

To apply:

Post 20-30 pages of your work in progress to:
The Stinging Fly, PO Box 6016, Dublin 8 by Friday, September 4^th 2009.

Include a short cover letter that includes any publication history and full contact details. (For information purposes only: places on the workshop will be offered on the basis of the work in progress submitted.)

Submissions must be typed in font size 12 with double-line spacing.

Manuscripts will not be returned. E-mail submissions will not be accepted.

Cost of workshop: €1500 (to be paid once a place on the workshop has been offered. A schedule of payment by installment can be drawn up and agreed with individual partcipants where necessary.)

Starts: Monday October 12th

Times:  Twenty weekly workshops on Monday evenings from 6.00pm – 9.30pm 
(Tues eve where Monday is a Bank Holiday)

Plus five Saturday sessions (dates TBC) 10.00am – 4.00pm

Venue: The Irish Writers’ Centre, 19 Parnell Square, Dublin 1

The Stinging Fly Summer Readings Series
@ the Irish Writers’ Centre: Three Thursdays in July

Doors at 7 p.m.

Admission €5 (which can be used towards the purchase of any Stinging Fly publication)

Irish Writers’ Centre is at 19 Parnell Square, Dublin 1.

9 July:

Launch of Issue 13, the Summer 2009 issue
Readers will include Phillip Cummings, Martin Dyar, Catherine Finn, Máighréad Medbh and Geraldine Mitchell.

Musical guests: The Good Time Maritimes

16 July:

Readings by Featured Poet Richard W. Halperin (Summer ’09), Alison MacLeod, Adam Marek and 2008 Stinging Fly Prize winner Orlaith O’Sullivan.

Musical guest: Monica Harkin

23 July:

Reading by Michael J. Farrell, author of the new short story collection, Life in the Universe (Stinging Fly Press, 2009) and the six winners of The Stinging Fly New Work Showcase.

Musical guest: Larry Beau

Congratulations to Claire Keegan on last night winning the 2009 Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award.

Read today’s Irish Times story here.

Richard Ford’s Citation for the winning story–

“Foster” puts on display an imposing array of formal beauties at the service of a deep and profound talent. It tells a conceivably simple story – a young child given up to grieving foster parents and then woefully wrested home again. Claire Keegan makes the reader sure that there are no simple stories, and that art is essential to life. In lifting a homely rural existence to our moral notice, she brings a thrilling synaesthetic instinct for the unexpected right word, and exhibits patient attention to life’s vast consequence and finality. She knows when to linger and never does so without profit, and indeed is never timid about saying more when less would be less. In this way she is a generous writer, always urging her sentences onward, adventurously extending our understanding, upping the ante, never obscuring or taking shelter in what can’t be known. Yet sparkling talent aside, this is by no means a gaudy story – but a rather muted and decorous one entrusted to the voice of a child infused with the imagination of a seer. And yet to read it word upon word (as one must) is to experience a high-wire act of uncommon narrative virtuosity.

 —Richard Ford

Claire Keegan was raised on a farm in Wicklow. She completed her undergraduate studies at Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana and subsequently earned an MA at The University of Wales and an M.Phil at Trinity College, Dublin. Her first collection of stories, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. Her second, Walk the Blue Fields, was published in May 2007.

Her stories have won several awards including The Hugh Leonard Bursary, The Macaulay Fellowship, The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, The Martin Healy Prize, The Olive Cook Award, The Kilkenny Prize, The Tom Gallon Award and The William Trevor Prize, judged by William Trevor. Twice was Keegan the recipient of the Francis MacManus Award. She was also a Wingate Scholar. She lives in Wexford.

We hope to publish the six shortlisted stories later this year.

The six writers shortlisted for the 2009 Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award are:

Claire Keegan

Mary Leland

Molly McCloskey

Eoin McNamee

Kathleen Murray

Susan Stairs

Congratulations to each of these.

You can read what Richard Ford had to say about his experience of reading the final set of stories, and his comments on the six he selected here.

More information on the shortlisted writers and the competition process are here.
The overall winner of the 2009 Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award will be announced on June 22nd.