‘Greek Lessons is a puzzle... I’m unable to decide whether some truth about language has been excavated in the book—but also whether that was ever the point.’
The Sligo author was awarded the €2000 prize for his “eerie” debut story, ‘The Afterlife’, described by the judges as an “uncanny, expertly controlled, chilling fable”.
Author and academic Tim Groenland talks to our incoming editor Lisa McInerney about reading submissions, the magazine’s editorial process, and keeping up with an ever-changing publishing landscape.
Our Summer 2023 issue is here and contains many a fine thing!
‘Writing is the only time when the papery thinness of my skin feels like an asset; when curiosity climbs over shame to burn like a guiding beacon; when the right arrangement of words feels like the gentle closing of a door.’
Essayist, journalist, and memoirist Darran Anderson joins Nicole Flattery to read and discuss Mary O'Donoghue’s short story, ‘During the Russian Blizzard’.
‘I have a habit of telling stories too fast, expecting a coherent narrative to spring up from a few words flimsily strung together on a string. The problem is words words words. The more neatly I arrange them, the more they lose their flavour.’
‘I remember my uncle cutting his toe nails with a razor blade. I remember my father drunk from Sunday to Sunday. There has to be a monument to the failures as well.’
‘Something always came down like a guillotine to split her life in two, so that on one side was happiness, and on the other, the present.’
‘This was in Montpellier, in 2012. He was a legionnaire from Birmingham; his reclaimed name was Roger, and he was the most intelligent murderer I have ever met.’
‘In the hours and days after seeing Eugene, I was particularly bad: sobbing uncontrollably, vomiting, roaring into the hell’s bells of night. I prayed for typhus, Asiatic cholera, plain old consumption, anything that would do the job for me. I had no way to impart how terrible and terrified I felt except to write it down.’
‘Her husband was asleep beside her, snoring gently, and she lay, breathing shallowly, planning her next move.’
21st April 2023
25th January 2023
Author and academic Tim Groenland talks to our incoming editor Lisa McInerney about reading submissions, the magazine’s editorial process, and keeping up with an ever-changing publishing landscape.
‘Writing is the only time when the papery thinness of my skin feels like an asset; when curiosity climbs over shame to burn like a guiding beacon; when the right arrangement of words feels like the gentle closing of a door.’