9th April 2025
‘He knows his brother is driving. The two of them are in their mother’s car and his brother is next to him. He rests his head against the passenger window and closes his eyes. There are bumps in the road. His head bangs against the window but there is no pain.’
6th March 2025
“The children step forward one by one, and say, ‘I’m special because…’ and one by one they fill in why with brave, loud voices. They’re too young to hide who they are. The people watching them know them better than they’ll ever know themselves.”
7th January 2025
‘From inside this hell, in this dazed state of terror, I write to you about my adventure yesterday, offering a testimony of defeat from a man who longs for a hot bath like the ones he used to take before the war.’
8th November 2024
For this month’s story, Nuala O’Connor takes inspiration from Elizabeth Bowen’s 1925 short story, ‘The Parrot’.
15th November 2023
‘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.’
11th October 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.’
21st June 2023
A story from Mary O’Donoghue’s new collection, The Hour After Happy Hour.
23rd May 2023
‘It is the day of my execution. From where I have been positioned on the stage, I cannot help admiring all the work that has gone into decorating the assembly hall.’
5th October 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.’
17th June 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.’