The Stinging Fly

We don’t need much by way of an excuse to head for Galway but that said the latest issue has quite a number of contributors who are either Galway based or originally from there… so join us and them and a few more besides in the cafe of the Galway City Museum on Thursday, August 12th - 7pm.

Where: Eight Café at Galway City Museum, Spanish Parade.

Readers: Kimberly Campanello, Mary Costello, Nicola Griffin, Edward Lee, Aifric Mac Aodha, Andrew Meehan and Lorna Shaughnessy.

Plus one special musical guest

A New Way To Fly

Organised by The Stinging Fly in association with the Irish Writers’ Centre

Sean O’Reilly will lead a second novel-writing workshop this year, starting in October. We’re accepting applications for it now.

The workshop runs over a period of twenty weeks (starting early October) with weekly sessions where participants present and discuss their own work. In addition there will be five day-long sessions with visiting writers. Eight to ten participants will be selected on the basis of work submitted (before August 20th) and they will be expected to work towards the completion of the first draft of a novel. The cost is €1500.

To receive more information on this year’s workshop and the application procedure, send us an e-mail.

Sharp Sticks Driven Nails is the next book from the Stinging Fly Press. Edited by Philip Ó Ceallaigh, it is our third anthology of short stories after These Are Our Lives (2006) and Let’s Be Alone Together (2008). It will be published in October.

We have a special offer running at present which allows you to get a copy of our most recent book, Fighting Tuesdays, and to pre-order a copy of the new book. Postage is free to anywhere in the world.

See more details of the offer and the new anthology here.

Join us on Thursday July 8th for the launch of the Summer 2010 issue. 7pm in Sin É, 14-15 Ormond Quay (down from Capel Street).

The issue is guest edited by Sean O’Reilly and boasts a new layout and design by Fergal Condon. It’s currently at the printers. There have been a few unfortunate and unavoidable delays due but we should now have copies out by the end of next week. We hope you’ll enjoy the new look and all the new writing.

Note on 2010 Submissions:

We received more than 500 stories and a good many more poems during this year’s submission period. We’ve got through most of these now and hope to make final decisions within the next couple of weeks. It has taken longer than we’d hoped. But this is one thing that can’t be rushed. Thanks to all who submitted work this year.

We are very happy to announce the publication of Fighting Tuesdays, a book of 24 stories by fourth year students from Larkin Community College. The book is published in association with Fighting Words, the creative writing centre established last year by Roddy Doyle and Sean Love, and will be launched next Tuesday evening at an event in the school from 6 to 8pm. All are welcome. The school is on Champions Avenue, off Sean Mac Dermott Street, Dublin 1.

Read Tom Humphries’ Irish Times article on the book and its young authors here.

To find out more about the book, or to order a copy online, go here.

The book is also available in all the best bookshops, priced €9.99.

We are delighted to announce the recruitment of Aifric Mac Aodha as Irish-language poetry editor to the magazine. It is hoped that with Aifric on board we will be able to include poetry as Gaeilge in each issue from now on. As with all the work we do, we are particularly interested in seeking out work by new and emerging writers. In the interest of bringing this new writing to as wide an audience as possible, we also plan to feature English-language translations of all the poetry selected for publication. To this end we will attempt where possible to pair Irish-language poets up with other poets and/or translators.

Aifric Mac Aodha’s first poetry collection, Gabháil Syrinx, is about to be published by An Sagart. Her poems have been published in various journals, including Poetry Ireland Review, Innti and Bliainiris. She has received a number of prizes for her poetry and was recently awarded an Arts Council bursary.

Tá áthas orainn a chur in iúl go bhfuil Aifric Mac Aodha earcaithe againn mar eagarthóir filíochta Gaeilge ar an iris.  Táthar ag súil go mbeadh dánta Gaeilge i ngach eagrán feasta, anois go bhfuil Aifric inár measc. Mar is nós oibre linn, saothar le scríbhneoirí úra óga atá á chuardach anseo. Tá rún againn aistriúcháin Bhéarla a chur ar fáil i gcás na ndánta a roghnófar, chun go mbeadh teacht ag pobal níos leithne orthu. Chuige sin, déanfaimid iarracht ar fhilí Gaeilge a cheangal le filí agus/nó aistritheoirí Béarla.

Is gar go bhfoilseoidh an Sagart Gabháil Syrinx, an chéad chnuasach filíochta le Aifric Mac Aodha. Tá dánta dá cuid i gcló ar irisí go leor, Poetry Ireland Review, Innti agus Bliainiris ina measc. Is iomaí duais atá gnóthaithe aici as a cuid filíochta agus bronnadh dámhachtain de chuid na Comhairle Ealaíon uirthi le déanaí.

Iarratais á Lorg

While we are no longer accepting other submissions for 2010, we will now take submissions of poems in Irish up to the end of June.

Cé nach bhfuilimid ag glacadh le gnáthiarratais don bhliain 2010, cuirfimid fáilte roimh dhánta i nGaeilge  go dtí deireadh mhí an Mheithimh.

Treoirlínte:

- Ní léifear aon dán ríomhsheolta. Seoltar na hiarratais chuig:

Aifric Mac Aodha, Eagarthóir Filíochta, The Stinging Fly, Bosca PO 6016, BÁC 8.

- Ní léifear ach ceithre dhán ar a mhéad

- Ní léifear ach dánta fiche líne nó níos gonta

- Bíodh litir mhínithe leis an iarratas agus seoladh r-phoist luaite inti ar mhaithe le comhfhreagras. Más mian leat go gcuirfí d’iarratas ar ais chugat, bíodh clúdach faoi stampa agus seoladh istigh leis.

We’re delighted to see Kevin Barry’s There Are Little Kingdoms among the fifty books nominated for the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book of the Decade.

The collection was first published in 2007 and continues to attract new readers and fans. (We’ve just done another reprint.) Kevin is reading at the Cúirt Festival in Galway next week as part of the New Yorker series of readings (Wed 21st). Also at the festival is the premiere of an adaptation (with puppets!) of his story ‘Burn The Bad Lamp’. (Town Hall Theatre Studio, April 19th-25th).

Vote for the Irish Book of the Decade here.

Sean O’Reilly has signed up as the guest editor for our next issue to be published in June.

“The job of The Stinging Fly is to find and nurture new writing,” Sean says, “so I’ll be reading the pile of submissions to see what I can see. And I’m hoping to commission a few pieces as well. And anything else out there ready to air itself, anything craving the page, then fire it in.”

The annual open-submission period comes to an end next Wednesday, March 31st so submissions for the summer issue and for the following two issues (Winter 2010-11 & Spring 2011) should arrive at the address below (or at least be in the post) by this date. The reading process is already under way – and we aim to have it completed by the end of April.

Congratulations to Kit Fryatt who has won this year’s Stinging Fly Prize for her poem ‘Ghastlymake’, which appeared in the Winter 2009-10 edition.

The Stinging Fly Prize goes each year to a writer who has published work (poetry or fiction) in the magazine and who has yet to publish a book.

This year’s judge was William Wall, who in his judge’s report spoke of the twin difficulties of choosing between poetry and prose, and selecting a winner when the standard of the work was so high:

‘As always there was plenty of both insight and beauty in the year’s crop of Stinging Flies. In fact, there was no bad work and this makes life difficult for the judge. Bad work is almost instantly recognisable and can be dismissed out of hand. The Fly contains none of it. Every piece is interesting, most are wonderful. Several pieces provoked a profound bout of practitioner’s envy.

‘In the end I resolved my difficulties by asking myself which of the shortlisted poems and prose I most liked. Kit Fryatt’s “Ghastlymake” came to me over and over again and it’s still a persistent haunting. In a sense it imposed itself on me. The language is inventive and conscious of itself, the theme a fascinating one, the ending beautiful. It’s a lyric, not a potted narrative, mysterious and beautiful as the best of them are.‘

Kit Fryatt was born in Tehran in 1978. She has lived in Ireland since 1999, and is a lecturer in English at the Mater Dei Institute of Education in Dublin, where with colleagues she co-ordinates the activities of the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies. She also runs the Wurm im Apfel reading series and its associated reading group, Wurmshop.

You can read the full judge’s report here.

The Stinging Fly and Opium magazine (Brooklyn, NY) are happy to present one great big night out at the Sugar Club next Friday March 5th…

7.30 - 8.30

Launch of the Spring 2010 issue of The Stinging Fly

9 pm until late:

Opium Magazine presents its first ever Dublin Literary Death Match…

The Literary Death Match

Colm Liddy and Nuala Ní Chonchúir (both featured in Issue 15) will battle it out with Brian O’Connell and Marty Mulligan in Opium magazine’s Literary Death Match, a marriage of “the literary and performative aspects of Def Poetry Jam, rapier-witted quips of American Idol’s judging (without any meanness), and the ridiculousness and hilarity of Double Dare…”

DOORS OPEN AT 7.30 PM

TICKETS: €9 at the door (€6 with a valid student ID)

BOOK AHEAD to ensure your place and to get tickets at discounted rate… We look forward to seeing you there!