‘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.’

Jacob Parker Fiction 5th April 2024

‘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?’

Rebecca Ivory Fiction 5th March 2024

‘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.‘

Mary Morrissy Fiction 7th February 2024

So Gelon says to me, ‘Let’s go down and feed the Athenians. The weather’s perfect for feeding Athenians.’

Ferdia Lennon Fiction 10th January 2024

‘Words slip on each other, he had thought. We get out from under what we know, we fail to get out from what we think. We never discover what thinking is.’

David Hayden Fiction 15th November 2023

A story by Maeve Brennan to mark her 30th anniversary: ‘All that night, she lay awake in a panic, thinking of ways to break with him. It would be heartless to tell him straight out that she had no use for him.’

Maeve Brennan Fiction 1st November 2023

‘They go around the block, dancing in their seats, screaming the lyrics at the bewildered Chris, and she finds herself wishing that they’ll never get there—that they could keep driving around and around like this forever.’

Lisa Owens Fiction 11th October 2023

‘I watch myself and I know what I’m thinking. I watch myself and I also know what I’m not thinking. I watch myself and I know I’m thinking, a week ago we were together in that little cottage on the farm in Wales, and now she’s in A&E in the hospital down the road and I’m sitting here waiting for her laundry to finish.’

Colm O’Shea Fiction 13th September 2023

‘When I developed my illness and could no longer work, he took pity on me and gave me a room and an allowance.’ 

Camilla Grudova Fiction 9th August 2023

‘In the early days, people told me my disease disgusted them. They didn’t say it in those words—they used phrases like ‘I hope this email finds you well,’ but the implications were clear enough.’

Ed Garland Fiction 19th July 2023

A story from Mary O’Donoghue’s new collection, The Hour After Happy Hour.

Mary O’Donoghue Fiction 21st June 2023

‘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.’

Cathy Sweeney Fiction 1st March 2023

‘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.’

Michael J. Farrell Fiction 2nd February 2023

‘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.’

Chetna Maroo Fiction 14th December 2022

‘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.’

Oisín Fagan Fiction 9th November 2022

‘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.’

June Caldwell Fiction 5th October 2022

‘Her husband was asleep beside her, snoring gently, and she lay, breathing shallowly, planning her next move.’ 

Lisa Owens Fiction 7th September 2022

‘Marcello's not a guy who likes used underwear, old shoes or bare feet. He’s a perfectionist, or maybe just a hypocrite.’

Gianluca Nativo Fiction 10th August 2022

‘Over Zoom one night, a therapist tucks her dark hair behind her ears and introduces herself as Maeve. They are about the same age, in their late thirties. She doesn’t ask about Orla’s childhood, or root around for scars. She says, Tell me what’s happening.’

Roisín O’Donnell Fiction 17th June 2022

‘I couldn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t shower, I couldn’t call my friends. Everyone has had a time like this—when they look in the mirror and, sure enough, an unknown animal stares back.’

Nicole Flattery Fiction 7th April 2022

"His mother had a choice between keeping the monkey or having the baby. She told the story often, in company, with a roll of her eyes and a helpless grin, as if this was the sore spot, the branching crossroads where her life had gone wrong. "

Sheila Armstrong Fiction 4th November 2021