On this month’s episode, host Nicole Flattery is joined by writer Oisín Fagan to read and discuss Mariana Enriquez’s story, ‘Back When We Talked to the Dead’, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, published in The Stinging Fly Issue 35, Volume 2: Winter 2019/20.
Oisín Fagan is the author of Hostages, and Nobber, which was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Woodhouse Prize, and was named a Book of the Year by The Guardian and The Daily Mail. His novel, Eden’s Shore, is coming out with John Murray Press in April, 2025.
Mariana Enriquez is the author of three novels, two collections of short stories and two works of non-fiction in Spanish. Her work has been translated into over twenty languages, and her most recent story collection, Things We Lost in the Fire, was published by Granta Books in 2017. Her stories have also appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, McSweeney’s and Asymptote.
Megan McDowell‘s translations include works by Alejandro Zambra, Samantha Schweblin, Lina Meruane, Diego Zuniga, and Alejandro Jodorowsky, and have been featured in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Tin House, McSweeney’s, Granta, and the Atlantic Quarterly, among others. She lives in Santiago, Chile.
Nicole Flattery is a writer and critic. Her story collection Show Them A Good Time, was published by The Stinging Fly and Bloomsbury in 2019. Her first novel, Nothing Special, was published by Bloomsbury in 2023.
The Stinging Fly Podcast invites writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast’s theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes’, by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available to subscribers.