Lost Between : Writings on Displacement an anthology

Lost Between was launched in the IWC recently to a full house. It is a beautiful collection of stories and poetry written by a group of Irish and Italian writers. I was a part of the first group of writers that went to Italy back in 2012. It was a fantastic experience. Some of the group recently had their stories translated into Italian. The second group of Irish writers headed over last year to successfully continue the project bringing it to a whole new level with Lost Between published by New Island. The introduction is written by Catherine Dunne and Federica Sgaggio who spear headed the project. As New Island writes "The individual works stand proudly by themselves to leave a lasting impression, and when read together they emerge to form a diverse, soulful and evocative collection that will charm and inspire."
You can listen to Catherine Dunne talk about the project recently on Arena.

Buy it here.

Rainbow Journeys Launch on Irish TV

Dublin Matters 23 | Irish TV

Rainbow Journeys launched!

Vision Impaired Writing Group take colourful journey through the past.

A new CD launched by a group of writers who are blind and vision impaired provides an opportunity to listen to unheard voices, as their personal reflections on real-life events take you through their “Rainbow Journeys” from past to present. Available to buy here.

The CD, entitled Rainbow Journeys, is a compilation of stories by a group of people with sight loss who got together through NCBI, the national sight loss organisation. Although they formed as a reading group, their interest soon moved on to writing and a class was facilitated by NCBI’s Niamh MacAlister, who stated:
“Most of the people NCBI works with acquire sight loss during their lives, and many as they get older, so reading and writing can suddenly become big challenges. NCBI works with people to find practical solutions to the challenges of sight loss but we also wanted to look at creative outlets. Creative writing was new for the 13 participants, all of whom have impaired vision. The goals of Rainbow Journeys were to write about our lives, the paths taken, the revelations, the lessons learned and bring to light the everyday wonder of our lives.”

The stories, which were then read by the writers and recorded, will take you on a ship from South Africa to Dublin, to the East Wall bomb of the 1950s, right through Europe on motorbike just after the Second World War and even getting caught skinny dipping by a priest! All are real-life events written and read by the participants.
May O’Brien, who is 82 and from Donnybrook, lost the sight in one eye in the 1990s and since 2006, has very little sight in her other eye. May believes that the group played an important supportive role for the participants.
“When we met as a reading group were just sharing views about the books, it was nothing personal. So when we began sharing our personal stories in the creative writing course it changed all of us. We built up confidence and trust and we supported each other. There was no façade where you pretend not to have a disability. And then you are accepting your disability, but also acknowledging that you still have a brain that needs a creative outlet.”

Rainbow Journeys was launched on Friday 17th October in Dun Laoghaire Town Hall as part of the Dun Laoghaire / Rathdown Social Inclusion Week.
NCBI would like to thank photographer Anna Nowakowska for volunteering her time to take part in this project. Find out more about Anna Nowakowska Portrait Photography. 

Launch Photos:

 (Anna Nowakowska)

 (Simon Robinson)

 (Simon Robinson)

 (Anna Nowakowska)

 (Anna Nowakowska)

Rainbow Journeys

 

Delighted to launch Rainbow Journeys at Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Social Inclusion Week at 11am Friday 17th of October in the Concourse of Dun Laoghaire town hall.

Rainbow Journeys, is about getting an opportunity to hear unheard voices. It began life in May 2014 when a group of eager and intrepid writers came together in the NCBI office in Dun Laoghaire. The goals were – to write about our lives, the paths taken, the revelations, the lessons learned and bring to light the everyday wonder of our lives. There were thirteen brave service users in all. Unfortunately one of our team passed away during our journey, Anne Barnes, and we proudly dedicate the CD to her.

 

Produced and Edited by Niamh MacAlister,

Co-ordinated by Aleksandra Okupinska,

Sound Engineer: Alan White,

Photographer: Anna Nowakowska



Liberty Silk by Kate Beaufoy

Another Tuesday, another book launch in the Gutter Bookshop. Liberty Silk by Kate Beaufoy was delightfully introduced by Ciaran Hinds. Yes, that Ciaran Hinds!
Kate Beaufoy is the new pen name for Kate Thomspon. If you recognise the name its probably because you have either seen Glenroe or read one or two of the eleven books she has written.  
Kate was also the first VIP guest author for the NCBI and Childvision's annual Readathon in 2008. She kindly returned to help us celebrate its five year anniversary last year.
The idea for the book was born from letters her grandmother wrote after the first world war - all of which feature in the book. The story's breadth stretches from Paris 1919 to Hollywood 1945 to 1965. It is "an evocative story of survival, betrayal and the invincibility of love." Available in all good bookshops now.

Fallen by Lia Mills

A fortnight ago I went to the launch of Fallen by Lia Mills in the Gutter Bookshop. It was a warm muggy evening and the shop was busting at the seams with Lia fans. Not only did the book sell out but I didn't even get near the wine table! Luckily for me a very generous gentleman gave me a copy so I didn't go home empty handed.
I started it last night greedily devouring the first half in one sitting. The writing is stunning and the story engaging and unique. Anne Enright, during her introduction, observed that this is probably the start of many stories around the backdrop of the 1916 rising but that Lia has the edge on being one of the first, and of course being the best. Having received rave reviews in the run up to the launch expect to hear people talking about this book for a while to come. Get reading!
Check out her blog Libran Writer.

Siri Hustvedt

I recently saw Siri Hustvedt in Smock Alley Theatre during Dublin Writers Festival. I am in awe of the woman. Intellect seeps out of her pores. What amazes me is how lightly she carries it. Her breadth of knowledge doesn't weigh her down with pretentiousness. She spoke of the complex theories and ideas wrapped up in her new book "The Blazing World". Her eloquence is an inspiration.  I've started the beautifully written book but already I've had to stop to research books and artists she's referenced. I managed to track down "On the problem of empathy" by Edith Stein (another amazing woman, a Jewish philosopher who changed to Catholicism and later died in Auschwitz, Phenomenology was her modus operandi.). Although I'll be saving it for another day. I love how this isn't just a book to be consumed but that it gets me reaching out into a spiders web of another book, after another book, after another. I can't recommend it highly enough and I'm not even half way into it.

Here she is being fabulous in a recent short interview from The Guardian.

Siri Hustvedt is the internationally bestselling author of What I Loved, The Summer Without Men and The Enchantment of Lily Dahl. Her latest novel, The Blazing World, is a brilliant, provocative novel about Harriet Burden, an artist who, after years of being ignored, conducts an experiment: she conceals her identity behind three male fronts in three solo exhibitions.

What's the message here? Does the world hate women? Or do women need to try harder?
I really do not want to use the word "message". This is a much more complex story. Harry – the artist Harriet Burden – is right that there is a "masculine enhancement effect". The arts are often thought of as "sort of feminine" and science as masculine. These divisions are underlying our perceptions. There are a number of other positions and perspectives that are meant to complicate the reader's understanding of this story. There is no message. There is nothing simple about this. The act of reading the book mirrors the content of the book. It is meant to be a game and a puzzle. You can't think of Harry's story as simply a feminist parable. Even though had she been a man her work would have got more recognition.

Where did the idea for Harriet come from? Could it happen in real life?
There have been art hoaxes and they're mentioned in the book. I suppose it could happen. But the kernel of the idea was a woman hiding behind male masks as an experiment. I wanted a book that felt refracted. So you have this intimate, bold voice from the notebooks [Harry's diaries] but all these people commenting on the same story. Which, of course, changes the story.

What made you choose the polyphonic structure?
I knew it was going to be many voices. Part of it came out of a desire that I always want to do something I haven't done before. I began to think of this as my "multiple personality disorder book" because I had to have all these different voices and inhabit them. There is a lot of unconsciousness involved in summoning those voices and sometimes they surprise you. It's not a situation of absolute control.

The art world was the backdrop for What I Loved. Why return to it?
I continue to write essays about art. The visual is always part of my work and it gives me immense pleasure to make up the words of art and create them verbally rather than build them.

Do you consider that your own work is ever judged a certain way because you are a woman? (A German reviewer once said that he "knew" her first novel, The Blindfold, was written by Hustvedt's husband, novelist Paul Auster.)
This is extremely difficult to answer. This is why sexism can become so riddled. Many writers will tell you they think women writers are treated differently. I get asked: "What advice do you have for young women writers?" I answer: "Would you ever ask a male writer, 'What advice do you have for young male writers?'" Women are in an unequal position and so giving that advice makes sense. But really these are unconscious forms of sexism.

When did you first know you were a writer?
The fantasy arrived when I was 13. I was in Reykjavik for a summer and it never got dark. There was a whole library of English books and I was a great reader. I suddenly had access to books that were too hard for me before. Lots of Dickens. Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights. Jane Austen. I couldn't stop. I read the abridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo. I read some Mark Twain. While reading David Copperfield in the middle of the night – probably because of the light I had insomnia for the first time – I looked out of the window and thought, "If this is what books can do, this is what I want to do." I published my first poem in The Paris Review in 1980.

What's your favourite waste of time?
If I have open time and I'm in Manhattan, I'll just walk to wherever I'm going, even if I could get there faster on the subway. I just love walking the streets of New York.

Writing for the Ear

I've spent the last four Fridays teaching a creative writing class called "Writing for the Ear" to NCBI service users in Dublin. The aim of the course was that each person write a short piece about an event in their life.  Something from their childhood, something that's happening now, something that affected them or their perceptions and how it changed them. Designed to suit all levels of writing; from the experienced to the novice. I covered how to get started, engaged listening and reading, the narrative arc, language use, editing, critique and constructive criticism.
Listening to other people's stories on StoryCorps and Sunday Miscellany gave us lots of inspiration

I had the most amazing time. It was such a privilege to be able to help each participant write their story and listen to the finished pieces. It was especially great to hear, not only the stories of people who had never written before but, how much they enjoyed doing it!

I'll act as producer as each participant records their story in the NCBI studios. Once the finishing touches are applied we will have a CD book which we hope to launch at the Dun Laoghaire Social Inclusion Week in October, 2014. So keep an eye out on my blog for updates.
In the long term I hope to oversee an archive of stories from unheard voices. Stories that you would never have heard otherwise. Personal experiences and stories that will enrich your own life once you've heard them. I know that sentence sounds grandiloquent, but believe me once you've heard the stories you'll agree.

If you have any enquires about this project please feel free to contact me!


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Snizzly Snouts

 

Snizzly Snouts; Fabulous new tactile book brings a whole new experience to young blind, vision impaired and sighted readers. Take a look at it in action!

NCBI was thrilled to host the launch of a fabulous new illustrated, tactile book called Snizzly Snouts, for children of all ages, at the ChesterBeatty Library, Dublin Castle on Friday February 7th 2014.

The book, which is the English language translation of the original Dutch Rare Snuiters (Weird Guys) by writer Jan Dewitte and artist Freya Vlerick, is accompanied by two CDs which contain the GPS commentary giving a full directional description and a complete guide to the book’s content.

Elaine Howley CEO, NCBI Services, who welcomed the invited audience to the Chester Beatty Library for the launch of the book said, “It is a real privilege for NCBI to be part of this wonderful project. For me, this book is unique, it’s a work of art and I would like to congratulate all those involved in its production”. Elaine spoke of the services of NCBI, particularly its support for blind and vision impaired children and their families and NCBI’s advocacy of their rights to fully participate in society.

“Children with impaired vision should have as much access to reading material, and learning through reading, as all other children. NCBI fosters this, particularly through our involvement in the EVEIL Project — working with children and parents in Ireland and with partners across five other EC countries, looking at how children with impaired vision can access the information that is usually available through books — and particularly with pictures in books — that people have difficulties accessing. Now while there are some tactile books which we have seen, being produced around Europe, none of them are anything like Snizzly Snouts.”

The book is aimed at blind and vision impaired and sighted readers. Its wonderful tactile illustrations and verse in ink print and in Braille are bought to life by the unique GPS descriptions which guide the reader through the book. The original Dutch version Rare Snuiters was produced by NCBI’s partner Blindenzorg Licht en Liefde, a similar organisation serving blind and vision impaired people in the Flemish part of Belgium. Rare Snuiters was four years in the making and sold out in its first three print runs.

But it was not an easy passage to completion. Writer Jan Dewitte told NCBI News, “I am a poet and a writer for children and I also work for Blindenzorg Licht en Liefde. As part of my job I run a documentation service where students often come seeking information. One of these students was Freya Vlerick who was then an art student at the Academy of Antwerp. She had the idea to make a book which could be read and seen by sight for a week through illness and, remembering that experience, she always had it in her mind to produce such a book. She told me about her project and also said she was looking for a writer. We just seemed to click and that same day we started the project.

“It was a collaborative process, I wrote some poems in Flemish and she made some illustrative drawings of the poems and we considered and argued about their effectiveness, working through many changes until we had the prototype complete. The prototype which Freya made was not suitable for reproduction but in fact that was an advantage because all the obstacles forced us to be inventive, to think about new things. One of these was the GPS for the fingers which we invented — a system which make it possible for blind and sighted children to interpret tactile print, which is not very easy if you don’t have experience of it”.

“And it was here that playwright and poet, MartinBurke — and Irishman living in Belgium — was invaluable with the translation of the GPS. Jan and Freya also consulted field experts, Kristien De man and Peter Vanhoutte. Kristien who is blind, advised on the design of the relief and the GPS; and Peter who is deaf and blind (Peter has since given dozens of Snizzly Snouts workshops with plenty of humour). The project progressed, but it was very difficult to get it into print because it is very expensive to print relief and while commercial publishers loved our idea, they did not think the profit margins justified them taking it on”.

Eventually they found a Belgium publisher who agreed to host the project so that they could get it into the regular book circuit and Blindenzorg Licht en Liefde funded the project, with additional support from private and governmental institutions. A specialised printing company in Cracow, Poland undertook the embossed printing. Rare Snuiters has gone into it fourth printing, with well over 2,000 copies purchased by readers in Flanders and the Netherlands. It has received two international awards: The White Raven Special Mention 2012 from The International Youth Library; It has also been selected for the travelling exhibition: OutstandingBooks for Young People with Disabilities. This recognition of the value of the book encouraged Blindenzorg Licht en Liefde to provide editions in other languages, and so the NCBI partnership and the English language translation arose.

Jan consulted Marcus Cumberlege an English writer and poet who has lived in Belgium for almost 40 years to consider the translation. Marcus was honoured to take it on. Marcus told NCBI News: “My father, Michael Cumberledge, a poet in the 1930s wrote a lot of amusing verses about animals, very much in the style of Jan Dewitte’s own style:

“Does the rabbit in its hutch

Suffer very very much;

Is it prone to mal at ease

Or only fleas”

and Jan’s verses are humorous in that way, he is not humorous to the disadvantage of the animals, but brings out their lovability through his humour”. Being able to read fluently in Dutch, Marcus was the ideal translator and both he and Jan are very happy with the accuracy and sensitivity of the translation.

“I came across the title Snizzly Snouts partly because animals with snouts, like the tapir, the elephant and the pig are included” says Marcus.

“Snizzlys goes back to my days at school at Sherbourne in Dorset, England, when I was the editor of the school magazine and I edited an article called Snizzly Snouts by a boy of 13 from America, who wrote about a Snizzly Snout. That stuck in my mind and I borrowed that title from him, I can’t remember his name now”.

Writing and translating the actual poems came sporadically to Marcus, but over a period of two years he completed them to his entire satisfaction. The poems in the original Dutch are very fine poems and Jan has captured the imagined feelings of the animals very well — with an enormous amount of humour, the kind of humour that Marcus could easily latch onto. He is extremely happy with the translations and thinks that they are suitable to be read by children of all ages and for parents to enjoy as well.

“I am very pleased that the English edition is out and launched here in Dublin, I spent eight years of my life in Ireland, six years as a child on a farm in Cork, surrounded by animals of all sorts, and my Irish background is very strong, When I met my now second wife, we went to live in Connemara for two years, and we wanted to buy a cottage and stay there, but we ran out of money and had to go back to Belgium to work”.

It was Blindenzorg Licht en Liefde’s Chief Executive, Gerrit Vonck who asked Des Kenny and NCBI to consider a collaboration for the English language production, and so the partnership was born. Lina Kouzi, NCBI’s Library and Media Service manager and her team of Niamh MacAlister, and reader Karl Brown worked closely with their Flemish partners, and they have produced a fine English language edition. Niamh, who is a Braille Editor at the NCBI library worked very closely with Jan, Marcus and Martin Burke editing and helping with the translations and the audio script and proof-reading the Braille. “We worked very closely,” says Niamh, “ironing out the tricky bits, as we searched for just the right word or turn of phrase to bring the script to life for our English language readers”.

Snizzly Snouts can be bought in the Chester Beatty shop or ordered from the NCBI Shop in Drumcondra (01-8307033) and Kilkenny (056-7786816) or on-line at www.ncbi.ie/shop for €29.95 per copy — CD included).

There is no shipping charge. This price just covers the production cost. Snizzly Snouts is a non-commercial project. Our only aim is to promote the great value of an inclusive approach to learning and tactile experience.

 

(text taken from the NCBI News)

Per Petterson on death

Difficult to write about, as a reader I find I am usually left feeling bereft after I read about it.  Not because of the inherent fear of it but because someone else's interpretation of it is so far off the mark of my own.  Until I read this from "I Curse the River of Time" by Per Petterson. Heart-breaking.

"But when it came to dying, I was scared. Not of being dead, that I could not comprehend, to be nothing was impossible to grasp and therefore really nothing to be scared of, but dying itself I could not comprehend, the very instant when you know that now comes what you have always feared, and you suddenly realise that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone forever, and the one you were, is the one those around you remember. Then that must feel like someone's strong hands slowly tightening their grip around your neck until you can breath no more, and not at all as when a door is slowly pushed open and bright light comes streaming out from the inside and a woman or a man you have always known and always liked, maybe always loved, leans out and gently takes your hand and leads you in to a place of rest, so mild and so fine, from eternity to eternity."

Catherine Dunne wins the International Prize of the Giovanni Boccaccio Literary Awards

Catherine Dunne's  'THE THINGS WE KNOW NOW' has won the International Prize of the Giovanni Boccaccio Literary Awards, just announced yesterday.


The Press Release stated:
... "Catherine Dunne’s novel ‘The Things We Know Now’, Macmillan (‘Quel che ora sappiamo’, Guanda) is the winner of the International Literature Prize of the 32nd Giovanni Boccaccio Literary Awards.
This year’s prize celebrates the 700th anniversary of the great Italian novelist’s birthday: Giovanni Boccaccio was born in Certaldo, Florence, in 1313. In her imaginative exploration of the most painful grief that anyone can endure – the loss of a child through suicide – Dunne excavates the subtleties of both the inexplicable and the unspeakable. She illuminates that lack of understanding and awareness that can inhabit even the strongest and closest of our human relationships."

Follow her on twitter

Buy 'the things we know now'

her debut novel 'in the beginning' has just become available as a kindle download here.

Dacia Maraini reads at the Botanic Gardens!

 

Come one, come all! It promises to be a lovely afternoon ...

 

 

Books 2013

Waterstones has released its Debut Authors to watch in 2013. Nice to see Irish author Donal Ryan and Dublin born Kevin Maher in the mix.


Pig's Foot by Carlos Acosta (Bloomsbury, 30 October)


Idiopathy by Sam Byers (Fourth Estate, 25 April)

Y by Marjorie Celona (Faber and Faber, 17 January)

The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence (Hodder & Stoughton, 31 January)

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (Picador, 29 August)

The Fields by Kevin Maher (Little, Brown, 7 March)

The Son by Michel Rostain (Tinder Press, 23 May)

The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (Doubleday Ireland, 27 June)

Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera (William Heinemann, 26 September)

Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi (Viking, 4 April)

Ballistics by DW Wilson (Bloomsbury, 1 August)

The Ruins of Detroit

I saw "The Ruins of Detroit" exhibition by the photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre earlier this year in the Fontana Fortuna Gallery in Amsterdam. Industrial Detroit: a forgotten civilisation, a dying world that is still holding on with its steel girders and well built walls. The photos are a beautiful testement to what we are capable of acheiving but also what we are capable of destroying.

The complete annihilation of this part of the city from an industry led economy is enthralling. I marvelled at the audacity, bravery of both its inception and its destruction. They left behind homes, schools, theatres, doctors and dentists surgerys, alongside factories, police stations (including blood sample evidence) and offices. The kind of scene you'd expect to see after an apocolypse. But its neighbours have just stepped back and watched it callopse.

So whats changed? The cyclical and unchanging hounds of history divide and conquer no matter what this generation says about the last.

The artists statement: "Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies  and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension.  The state of ruin is essentially a temporary situation that happens at some point, the volatile result of change of era and the fall of empires. This fragility, the time elapsed but even so running fast, lead us to watch them one very last time :  being dismayed, or admire, making us wondering about the permanence of things. Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state."

The exhibitions tragic beauty is enthralling. Look through some more of the collection here. Buy the book here.
(Photographs in this post are copyright Yves Marchand, Romain Meffre)

Irish Book Awards 2012

Voting closes at midnight this Sunday (18th) so be sure to stick your oar in where it counts.
Vote here.  Five lucky voters will also be in with a chance to win some book tokens.
Support great Irish writers!


Heres the short lists:

Argosy Nonfiction Book of the Year

• The Good Room by David McWilliams
• A Kick Against The Pricks: The Autobiography by David Norris
• Country Girl by Edna O'Brien
• Everybody Matters by Mary Robinson
• Just Mary by Mary O'Rourke
• Atlas of The Great Irish Famine by Crowley, Smyth,Murphy

Eason Novel of the Year

• Astray by Emma Donoghue
• Dark Lies The Island by Kevin Barry
• Ancient Light by John Banville
• The Light of Amsterdam by David Park
• Where Have You Been? by Joseph O'Connor
• Hawthorn & Child by Keith Ridgway

Eason Popular Fiction Book of the Year

• A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy
• This Child of Mine by Sinéad Moriarty
• The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes
• The House on Willow Street by Cathy Kelly
• One Hundred Names by Cecelia Ahern
• This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon
• Better Together by Sheila O'Flanagan
• The Charm Bracelet by Melissa Hill

International Education Services Best Irish-published Book of the Year

• At War with the Empire by Gerry Hunt
• And Time Stood Still by Alice Taylor
• Triggs by Paul Howard
• Tyringham Park by Rosemary McLoughlin
• Atlas of the Great Irish Famine by Crowley, Smith, Murphy
• Isn't It Well For Ye? The Book of Irish Mammies by Colm O'Regan

Ireland AM Crime Fiction Award

• Vengeance by Benjamin Black
• The Istanbul Puzzle by Laurence O'Bryan
• Too Close For Comfort by Niamh O'Connor
• Red Ribbons by Louise Phillips
• Broken Harbour by Tana French
• Slaughter's Hound by Declan Burke

Lifestyle Sports Sports Book of the Year

• My Olympic Dream by Katie Taylor
• My Journey by Jim Stynes
• Cliffs Of Insanity: A Winter On Ireland’s Big Waves by Keith Duggan
• The Bull by John Hayes
• Memory Man by Jimmy Magee
• The Great and the Good by John Giles

Specsavers Childrens Book of the Year, Junior

• Guess How Much I Love You: Here, There and Everywhere by Sam McBratney (illustrated by Anita Jeram)
• Oh no, George! by Chris Haughton
• Adam's Greatest Inventions by Benji Bennett
• This Moose Belongs to Me by Oliver Jeffers

Specsavers Childrens Book of the Year, Senior

• Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer
• The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket by John Boyne
• Zom-B by Darren Shan
• Rebecca's Rules by Anna Carey
• Leave it to Eva by Judi Curtin
• Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked by Derek Landy

Sunday Independent Newcomer of the Year

• The China Factory by Mary Costello
• The Crocodile by the Door by Selina Guinness
• The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
• Tyringham Park by Rosemary McLoughlin
• This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon
• We Have a Good Time Don't We? by Maeve Higgins

Avonmore Cookbook of the Year

• Cake by Rachel Allen
• Kitchen Hero: Great Food for Less by Donal Skehan
• The MacNean Restaurant Cookbook by Neven Maguire
• Domini at Home by Domini Kemp
• Eat Like an Italian by Catherine Fulvio
• Irish Countrywomen's Association Cookbook by Irish Countrywomen's Association

John Murray Show Listeners' Choice Award

• Just Mary by Mary O'Rourke
• Run Fat Bitch Run by Ruth Field
• Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
• The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
• All In My Head: The Autobiography by Lar Corbett
• Broken Harbour by Tana French

Selina Guinness The Crocodile by the Door

As I made my way up the stairs of the deserted Guinness Store House I wondered what the night time view was going to be like from The Gravity Bar.

I had been invited to the launch of Selina Guinness’s debut book The Crocodile by the Door published by Penguin.

I’ll put it out there immediately I am a past pupil of Selina’s. Through out my four year degree she guided me through the mire of Irish Literature. But not only that; she was instrumental in securing Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill for our final year creative writing module, which was to set me on a path I have been walking ever since. With Selina’s gentle but persistent encouragement I later went on to do a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of St Andrews. Hands down one of the best years of my life.

The city lights twinkled below us as they stretched out over the city. Tibradden House, of which the Memoir is about, was well hidden in the swathes of black night as the city petered out towards the mountains.
When Harry Clifton took to the podium to introduce Selina he spoke of the mystery and majesty of the creation of a sense of place. How a place like Tibradden and a book like The Crocodile by the Door are so defining, not only for the people directly involved but also because it stretches so far beyond that and into the outer reaches and corners of a community, a city, a country.
The room stocked full of a myriad of friends and family listened to Selina’s heart felt words of thanks of which were suffused with perhaps a small lingering seed of disbelief that it had all worked out. Thankfully for us readers it did.

I am only a third into the book but am already enthralled with not only the fluidity and elegance of the prose but also the unrestrained and beautiful honesty of experience that has governed the experience and the writing. Because in life, that is all we have.

Already the book has been short listed for the “Sunday Independent New Comer of the Year Award” in the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards. Vote Here.
No doubt it is only the first of many well deserved successes for the woman, the book and the house.

Siri Hustvedt on writing

I love this woman! 'What I Loved' blew me away when I read it. Probably for that reason I'll never read it again. She strikes me as a woman with endless talent, intelligence and sophistication. I love what she says about the excitment of having the first thing published and how nothing since then has come close to that feeling.

Photograph: Michael Brennan/Getty Images

Siri Hustvedt, writer – portrait of the artist
Interview by Laura Barnett guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 July 2012

-'I don't read reviews. But I hear about them – especially when a book has been trashed.'
-'Every time I finish a book, I say: “Please let me live to write another one” … Siri Hustvedt at her home in Brooklyn.

What got you started?
A summer night in Reykjavik. I was 13 years old, and had been reading David Copperfield. I remember walking to the window and looking out at the city; it was still light, though it must have been one in the morning. I thought to myself, "If this is what novels are, it's what I want to do."

What was your big breakthrough?
I'd been writing poems for many years, but most of them I didn't like. Then, when I was 23, I wrote one I did like, sent it to the Paris Review – the highest publication I could think of – and they accepted it. No other moment in my literary life has quite come close to that.

You've often written about science. Should literature make more effort to understand science – and vice versa?
I deeply believe conversations among the disciplines can break open new kinds of thinking. Since I published The Shaking Woman: A History of My Nerves, I've been asked to speak at a number of neuroscience and psychoanalysis conferences. Recently, a neuroscientist friend was asked why he'd asked a novelist to speak to his department. He said, "Well, Siri is like yeast: she makes things grow." I'm very happy to be a kind of yeast.

What's the greatest myth about writing a book?
There's a myth of control. Writers are in control of editing processes – making a sentence better, cutting out a paragraph. But the initial outpouring has very little to do with conscious control or manipulation.

What song would work as the soundtrack to your life?
Bach's St Matthew Passion. Not because I have lived my love with that kind of grandeur, but because my inner-being responds to it so deeply.

What's the biggest threat to literature?
That it becomes, in the eyes of culture, a highly feminised form. Far more women read fiction than men, and because of this, novels have become marginalised as serious texts. I don't think it's a conscious, hostile act, but an unconscious feeling that seriousness in literature belongs to men, not women. However, I'm optimistic that if we bring this into the open, many people will realise they are suffering from a prejudice that they could very easily correct.

Do you read your reviews?
No. I hear about them, though – especially if a book has been horribly trashed. The publisher feels an obligation to tell you in case you go to a dinner party and people are looking at you cross-eyed.

What's your greatest ambition?
Every time I finish a book, I say to an imaginary god that I do not believe in, "Please let me live to write another one."

In short
Born: Northfield, Minnesota, 1955.
Career: Has published five novels, including What I Loved and The Summer Without Men, and several books of poetry, essays and non-fiction. Is appearing on Friday 13 July in the Literary Arena at Latitude 2012.
High point: "Finishing What I Loved after six years. It really felt like I'd broken through something in myself."
Low point: "Feeling, in interviews, that I haven't really been understood."

I saw history in the making!

Guinness World Record annihilation in the Irish Writers' Centre last Saturday. The record for most author's consecutively reading from their own books had originally been held by the Germans who managed a measly 75 authors. But now in our greatness we hold the record at 111 authors in 28 hours.
There was an amazing atmosphere at the Centre. I arrived at 5am Saturday morning and stayed until 2pm when the event was brought to a close with a reading and a fantastic speech by the director Jack Harte. I kept coffee pots topped up and made sure Butler's chocolates (who were the sponsors) were scattered through out the building. It was fantastic to be a part of it all.
It also served to highlight the amazingness of the staff there and just what a fantastic resource (not to mention beautiful building) the centre is. (Although my thighs from the upping and downing of the beautiful staircase have been the paying the price.)

This is from The Irish Times :

Irish writers break world record by Orla Tinsley

Irish writers made history today by breaking the world record for the most authors reading consecutively from their own work. Some 111 authors took to the podium against the clock at the Irish Writers' Centre in Dublin from 10am on Friday until 2pm today shattering the German held record.
The record was officially surpassed in the early hours of this morning by author Lissa Oliver who became the 76th person to read from her book Chantilly Dawns. The former Guinness world record of 75 authors reading consecutively was set at the Berlin International Literature Festival.
"At 5am there were quite a few people here and that was the point we exceeded the record," said programme co-ordinator John Kearns. "There were always between 10 and 20 people supporting over night," he said.
The event was streamed live across the world on the internet through the Irish Writers' Centre website and clocked up over 1,000 viewers.
Despite the benefits of technology supporters turned up throughout the night to hear authors read by candlelight under the watchful eye of invigilators from KPMG and The American University Ireland, who kept time and marked attendance for the Guinness Book of World Records.
Each author participating had precisely 15 minutes kept in check by a looming alarm clock directly infront of the podium.
Authors reading included Seamus Heaney, Kevin Barry, Ed O’Loughlin, Carlo Gebler, Catherine Foley, Roddy Doyle, Evelyn Conlon, Mike McCormack, Sarah Webb and Lucille Redmond.
The event was held to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the conception of the Irish Writers' Centre as well as raise awareness of the writing community in Ireland on Bloomsday.
"We wanted to emphasis that the tradition is not broken because these people died, the tradition continues and as you've seen over the last 28 hours there are wonderful writers writing and living in Dublin, in Ireland right to the present day. It is a source of enormous pride to the country that so many have achieved so much," said author and founder of the Irish Writers' Centre Jack Harte
The Guinness Book of Records rules dictated that the authors must read from one of their own works for 15 minutes and that each book must have a ISBN number.
Author Roddy Doyle who read from his book The Van described the experience as "nerve wrecking".
"The lights and everything are unusual and it's so hot in here compared to outside," he said.
"It's a great event. The surprise is that everybody turned up on time, given the reliability of Irish writers, it's a bit disturbing," he said.

Hemingway's house "Finca la Vigía", Cuba.

It was all exactly as he left it. That was the most surprising thing about my visit to Hemingway's house, about an hour outside of Havana. The day was hot, humid. The sun shining. But as we left the city behind and neared the house clouds started to roll in. The air was changing.

It was expensive to get through the front gate (probably the same price as a month's local wage) and all you could do was look through the open windows and doors. If it started to rain the guides and workers would set about closing them until the rain had absolutely stopped. We looked up at the sky and kept our fingers crossed.

I approached the front door and peered in. Feeling like a trespasser. Everything was exactly as he had left it in the late 50's. In a matter of months he would kill himself.

It was good taste incarnate. None of the beautifully designed (often especially for him and this house) would have looked out of place in a home today. And it struck me; the wealth, the freedom, the society. He had the world at his perfectly perfunctory feet. Constantly being, allowing himself to be, and actively wooing the whose who of the times. There was a small wooden bowl in the dining room with the engraving "From Mr and Mrs Roosevelt" (not Mr and Mrs President).

The magazine rack brimming with Time and literary journals.

And he often wrote standing up. This was something I didn't know. But then I don't think I was the fan I am now since seeing the house. I don't know if it was the air, the light, the impending storm but seeing the house left me with a silence; one that I am still unable to articulate. Perhaps a feeling of the impossibility of it all.

One of the best things in the house ... his daily record of his weight neatly inscribed just inside the bathroom door.  

Another one of his writing perches ... chair positioned with his back to the window. Which to me seemed odd.  I love nothing more than to face out the window. But then maybe that's why I haven't written a master piece yet. One of the items on his desk is a letter stamp that reads "I never write letters". Apparently he would return letters unopened with this defiantly emblazoned across their chests.

The room at the top of the look out tower where he only did his editing.

The old Corona that sits on that desk.

A walk through the pet cemetery and past the empty pool brings you to an awaiting Pilar under her canopy. Much bigger than I had imagined she would be. In my mind maybe all boats related to Hemingway are small with old men sitting in them.

The thunder rolled out just as our guide was finishing up with her last tit bit. As we exited the compound there were houses and huts built almost to the front gates and I wondered if it had been like that when he lived there?

And the heavy air followed us all the way back to Havana where I thought about how any of our lives must look from the outside, or the inside, of a home. How strange it is sitting there locked in another decade. In it's brilliance and isolation.

 

flash fiction : getting it right.

taken from the guardian


Stories in your pocket: how to write flash fiction 16 May is the first ever day celebrating the art of micro-fiction. But what are the pros and cons of ultra short stories – and what's the secret of writing them? Follow David Gaffney's tips.
It's National Flash Fiction Day on Wednesday – the first one ever – and it's an exciting day for me and many others who specialise in this particular truncated form of prose. A few years ago, I published a book of flash fiction called Sawn-off Tales. But until only a little while before that, I hadn't heard of flash fiction or micro-fiction or sudden fiction or short-short stories. Then, on poet Ian McMillan's recommendation, I parcelled up a manuscript made up entirely of this stuff and sent it to Salt Publishing, a poetry specialist. Fifty-eight stories, each exactly 150 words long. The odds were entirely against me. No one wants to publish short stories, least of all by an unknown. And stories that took less time to read than to suppress a sneeze? I was chancing it, I knew.

I began to produce these ultra-short stories – sawn-off tales, as I call them – when I was commuting from Manchester to Liverpool: a 50-minute journey, often elongated by windscreen-wiper failure, fights on the train, or getting stuck behind the "stopper". But I had a book, as did most passengers. One day while ruminating on the number of train journeys it took to read a novel, I began to wonder how long it would take to write one. I decided on 500 words a trip – there and back was 1,000 words a day – taking just four months to reach a respectable novel length of 80,000 words.

So the next day I boarded the 8.12am at Manchester Piccadilly, rushed for a table seat, and, instead of whipping out my paperback, set up my laptop and began tapping away. But after a couple of weeks it was clear that the novel wasn't working. What I'd produced was a set of separate stories each around a 1,000 words long.

I was about to ditch the idea when I heard about a new website called the Phone Book, which needed 150-word stories to send out as text messages. All that was needed was a bit of editing. Initially, as I hacked away at my over-stuffed paragraphs, watching the sentences I once loved hit the floor, I worried. It felt destructive, wielding the axe to my carefully sculpted texts; like demolishing a building from the inside, without it falling down on top of you. Yet the results surprised me. The story could live much more cheaply than I'd realised, with little deterioration in lifestyle. Sure, it had been severely downsized, but it was all the better for it. There was more room to think, more space for the original idea to resonate, fewer unnecessary words to wade through. The story had become a nimble, nippy little thing that could turn on a sixpence and accelerate quickly away. And any tendencies to go all purple – if it sounds like writing, rewrite it, as Elmore Leonard said – were almost completely eliminated. Adjectives were anthrax.

It worked. By the time I got to Birchwood I had it down to 500 words, by Warrington to 300, at Widnes 200 and as the train drew in to Liverpool Lime Street there it was – 150 words, half a page of story; with a beginning, a middle and an end, with character development and descriptions, everything contained in a Polly Pocket world.

These stories, small as they were, had a huge appetite; little fat monsters that gobbled up ideas like chicken nuggets. The habit of reducing text could get out of hand too; I once took away the last two sentences of a story and realised I had reduced it to a blank page.

Luckily the Phone Book liked my stories and published them, and I continued to churn them out each day on the train, while the train guard announced the delays, the tea trolley rolled past, and a succession of passengers sat next to me, reading over my shoulder.

A week after sending the manuscript to Salt Publishing I got a call from Jen, their editor. They wanted to publish it, and quickly. All I needed was a quote for the cover, a photo for the sleeve, and we were off.

I don't commute that route any longer – my new job covers the whole north west of England involving train trips to Blackpool, Lancaster, east Lancashire, west Cumbria and Cheshire, so my stories have grown quite a bit longer. But last time I was on a train to Lime Street the guard's identity badge took me right back – because that's where I got the names for all of my characters.

How to write flash fiction

1. Start in the middle.
You don't have time in this very short form to set scenes and build character.

2. Don't use too many characters.
You won't have time to describe your characters when you're writing ultra-short. Even a name may not be useful in a micro-story unless it conveys a lot of additional story information or saves you words elsewhere.

3. Make sure the ending isn't at the end.
In micro-fiction there's a danger that much of the engagement with the story takes place when the reader has stopped reading. To avoid this, place the denouement in the middle of the story, allowing us time, as the rest of the text spins out, to consider the situation along with the narrator, and ruminate on the decisions his characters have taken. If you're not careful, micro-stories can lean towards punchline-based or "pull back to reveal" endings which have a one-note, gag-a-minute feel – the drum roll and cymbal crash. Avoid this by giving us almost all the information we need in the first few lines, using the next few paragraphs to take us on a journey below the surface.

4. Sweat your title.
Make it work for a living.

5. Make your last line ring like a bell.
The last line is not the ending – we had that in the middle, remember – but it should leave the reader with something which will continue to sound after the story has finished. It should not complete the story but rather take us into a new place; a place where we can continue to think about the ideas in the story and wonder what it all meant. A story that gives itself up in the last line is no story at all, and after reading a piece of good micro-fiction we should be struggling to understand it, and, in this way, will grow to love it as a beautiful enigma. And this is also another of the dangers of micro-fiction; micro-stories can be too rich and offer too much emotion in a powerful one-off injection, overwhelming the reader, flooding the mind. A few micro-shorts now and again will amaze and delight – one after another and you feel like you've been run over by a lorry full of fridges.

6. Write long, then go short.
Create a lump of stone from which you chip out your story sculpture. Stories can live much more cheaply than you realise, with little deterioration in lifestyle. But do beware: writing micro-fiction is for some like holidaying in a caravan – the grill may well fold out to become an extra bed, but you wouldn't sleep in a fold-out grill for the rest of your life.

Off you go!