‘[N]one of us likes to think we live and have our days in a time more stupid than others we might have lived in. All previous ages were the dark ages, we like to believe, and we are the new and enlightened ones.’
On this month’s episode, host Nicole Flattery is joined by writer Mary O'Donoghue to read and discuss Colm O'Shea’s story, ‘Feeling Gravity's Pull’, originally published as part of the Online Fiction series on The Stinging Fly website in October 2023.
In Old Romantics, the drudge becomes the show. Pain is distilled into humour and absurdity. Here is a writer who likes to amuse, indulge, titillate and engage, inviting us to follow the chaos right from the opening lines of the opening story.
For this month’s story, Nuala O’Connor takes inspiration from Elizabeth Bowen’s 1925 short story, ‘The Parrot’.
‘Discussions of autism often focus on our brains as the source of how we think, but our brains also govern our senses, and so thorough portraits of autistic characters are necessarily physical and sensual. In All The Little Bird-Hearts, Sunday's first-person voice captures her embodied experience of the world.’
On this month’s episode, host Nicole Flattery is joined by writer Colin Walsh to read and discuss Clara Kumagai’s story, ‘Real Boys’, originally published in Issue 35, Volume 2: Winter 2016 - Fear & Fantasy.
‘[N]one of us likes to think we live and have our days in a time more stupid than others we might have lived in. All previous ages were the dark ages, we like to believe, and we are the new and enlightened ones.’
For this month’s story, Nuala O’Connor takes inspiration from Elizabeth Bowen’s 1925 short story, ‘The Parrot’.
This month’s story is co-authored by Eley Williams and Nell Stevens. It’s from Duets, a new anthology of co-authored stories, published this month by Scratch Books.
A new story by Lucy Sweeney Byrne from her second collection of stories, Let’s Dance, which will be published next month by Banshee Press.
'As she flew through the sky in the white clouds, Fatma agonised over the expectations placed on her. She thought about all the cars she was expected to bring back to her village, and the promises she had made to find people jobs – as if she could create opportunities in Bahari!'
A new short story from Wendy Erskine, written in 48 hours as part of our Great Big Giant Short Story Experiment.
Maeve Brennan
‘Reading Maeve Brennan is like watching a master jeweller construct a ticking watch from an array of tiny, inanimate parts—her exquisite skill in piecing together the emotional landscape of her characters is evident in every line.’ — The New York Times Book Review
30th October 2024
10th July 2024
22nd May 2024
‘[N]one of us likes to think we live and have our days in a time more stupid than others we might have lived in. All previous ages were the dark ages, we like to believe, and we are the new and enlightened ones.’
For this month’s story, Nuala O’Connor takes inspiration from Elizabeth Bowen’s 1925 short story, ‘The Parrot’.
‘What mattered most were the words on the page, and his precise, enthusiastic feedback when he liked those words was worth its weight in gold to the scores of writers whom he fostered.’