‘After the book I’ve been working on for three years gets rejected countless times by publishers and agents, I happen upon a bit of spare cash and say, fuck it, I’m getting a shed.’

Kevin Curran Essay 12th July 2023

‘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.’

Sheila Armstrong Essay 10th May 2023

‘I don’t want to be looked at but I sing, amplified in a crowded hall. I don’t believe in admitting opinions but I agree to explain myself in essay format… This is the want and the shame of wanting.’

Kevin Doherty Essay 29th March 2023

‘Rejection, back when I’d just started sending out stories, felt crushing. It sat upon me like a physical thing, squat and heavy.’

Danielle McLaughlin Essay 28th July 2022

'I got through it, not by talking, or thinking my way out, but by feeling. At one point over that painful weekend, my gut in knots, I realised: if I can feel this, I can get through anything.'

Mia Gallagher Essay

'I received detailed rejections last year from editors who had requested over ten pages of my work. I have rewritten a specific story for a journal on the editor’s advice and it was still not accepted. None of this means I am a failure, or a bad writer.'

Anna Walsh Essay

'There were times when I loved a book and felt in my bones that I could publish it well, only to bring it to a meeting and find that my colleagues didn’t feel the same.'

Angelique Tran Van Sang Essay

‘Writers have an advantage in this process: vulnerable as we are to the judgment of the world, we are also instinctively aware of the strength of an inner place, from which our best work always comes.’

Neil Hegarty Essay

‘I am the person and writer I am because I failed at a previous incarnation of life. Like most actors, I accumulated countless rejections and humiliations, surpassing in number my accomplishments.’

Jill Crawford Essay

A series of short essays reflecting on the experience of rejection. Contributors: Danielle McLaughlin, Jill Crawford, Neil Hegarty, Angelique Tran Van Sang, Anna Walsh, Mia Gallagher, with an introduction by Thomas Morris.

The Stinging Fly Essay