‘The Coming Thing is a complex book… the heightened brevity of its compressed form hits the reader with the full blast of joy and angst that characterise Imelda’s life as we buzz through the pages high on mad panicked anxiety, vicariously sipping Dubonnet and slugging bottles of Stag and Benylin cough mixture.’
Nicole Flattery is joined by Róisín Kiberd to read from John Patrick McHugh's essay 'Name Your Character' and discuss her recent appointment as non-fiction editor of The Stinging Fly.
A new short story from Wendy Erskine, written in 48 hours as part of our Great Big Giant Short Story Experiment.
‘A year into writing a second draft, I catch the first unsettling drift of unease, like something unpleasant and indefinable under the floorboards.’
‘Klein’s book also tells us that fear is a trap; what we cannot push away, into a shadow self, we must integrate instead, learning uncomfortable truths about ourselves in the process. What if we stop seeing the doppelganger as the enemy, and start thinking of them as a part of ourselves, gone rogue after years of being neglected and ignored?’
‘Normally I hate swimming in the ocean, everything about it scares me deeply; but after a few drinks I dive in fearlessly, with abandon and hope.’
A new short story from Wendy Erskine, written in 48 hours as part of our Great Big Giant Short Story Experiment.
‘Normally I hate swimming in the ocean, everything about it scares me deeply; but after a few drinks I dive in fearlessly, with abandon and hope.’
‘At the end of the corridor, through a door, Sylvester emerged into a games room. A skittles alley games room. It was a long room, whose centre was two brightly polished skittles alleys, and the boy. For there was a boy. There was.’
‘There’s just something about the way you are together. It’s a quiet sort of thing, but I’d say it works, doesn’t it?’
‘After a while he forgot he was dancing with his pen pal’s mother and he believed she forgot that he was the soft pouchy boy her daughter had brought home. That was the joy of it. They forgot themselves.‘
The text of our 2023 lecture, which was delivered by short-story writer and novelist, Evelyn Conlon.
10th July 2024
22nd May 2024
12th April 2024
A new short story from Wendy Erskine, written in 48 hours as part of our Great Big Giant Short Story Experiment.
‘A year into writing a second draft, I catch the first unsettling drift of unease, like something unpleasant and indefinable under the floorboards.’
‘Normally I hate swimming in the ocean, everything about it scares me deeply; but after a few drinks I dive in fearlessly, with abandon and hope.’