A profile about me in The Belfast Telegraph. From my home town, it’s also Northern Ireland’s best-selling newspaper and I’m profiled here by local legend Ivan Little. A few errors in there – I went to the University of Ulster at Coleraine for example… I can’t blame Ivan as we talked for hours and I was caffeine fuelled.
I hope you like it.
Do you like going to live events? Watching and listening to authors read their work? I’m staying in my home town of Brighton tonight for Polari, hosted by the rather fab Paul Burston. I’ll be reading alongside VG Lee, Fergus Evans, Juliet Jacques and Damian Barr. Come along to The Marlborough Theatre at 7.30pm. You can get your tickets here.
My most unusual reading at the Wroclaw International Short Story Festival this month.
Tomorrow I’m off to Bath to teach my ‘Killer First Page’ class (sold out I’m afraid but tickets available for London). In the evening I’m reading with Tania Hershman and Sarah Hilary at St James Wine Vaults at 7.30pm.
Back in Brighton again on Wed 21st as part of the City Reads celebration of Matt Haig’s ‘The Humans’. A wealth of writing talent will respond to this work in their own way. Check out the list below.
On my birthday, October 27th, I’ll be reading in Hastings at my second Polari event of the month alongside Adam Mars-Jones, Chris Green, Diane Perry and Erica Smith. The event starts at 7.30pm at The Print works, 14 Claremont, America Ground.
Hope to see some of you there. Say hello.
I’m talking at West Sussex Writers tonight about writing, Word Factory, London Short Story Festival and my ‘Not The Booker’ Prize shortlisting.
Come to Inclusive Arts at Heene Gallery, Worthing at 7.30pm. Non-members very welcome, £5 including tea/coffee and cake.www.westsussexwriters.co.uk
Did you hear that? Includes tea and cake. And apparently there’s a raffle. I’d go just for that.
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| This Year’s Prize |
This sounds like a wonderful evening and I’m very excited to be part of it. Celebrating Matt Haig’s ‘Being Human’ with responses on the text from writers. Hope to see some of you there.
Hello lovely people. Judgement is upon me. It appears it is time when you can vote for your choice to win The Guardian‘s Not Booker Prize from the shortlist. Would be appreciated muchly if you had the time to vote for The Good Son.
Click this link and…
“Voting is simple. All you have to do is nominate your favourite book in the comments below this article. Please make it easy for us by writing the word “vote” and then specifying the name of the book you’re going for and the author at the start of your comment. We just want one vote from you, for one book. We’d also like to see 50 words or so explaining your choice. As ever, please don’t worry if you’ve changed your mind during the course of the competition.”
You could use the same review you gave last time, if you voted – its probably still on their site.
Many thanks… and wish me luck.
I met Monica Lavin on a trip to Mexico recently with The British Council. A huge star over there she is also a beautiful person. It was a pleasure to do this Q&A with her.
(Here’s just a little snippet…. head over to The Irish Times to read more.)
Why the love for short story writing?
Because I read wonderful stories as a teenager: Chekhov, Bradbury, Hemingway, Cortazar, Borges, Rulfo. Latin American writers’ books were fresh, the writers were alive. That gave another dimension to what I had read before. When I was a child I thought all writers were dead people. Maybe that is one of the reasons I could not picture myself as one, even though I had been writing stories since I was 13 years old. I did not how to become a writer.
Does your writing have anything to do with your scientific background?
I think science and writing have to do with the desire to know. Science deals with objective truth, literature with relative truth. El Quijote taught us that. The short story aesthetic has more to do with mathematical equations – they have to be balanced: nothing extra, nothing missing. I love the silence of the short story.
Why did you started writing novels?
I always felt there was a question behind each short story – what if…? Now I know it is more than that, and what I thought would be a short story commanded several questions. I was dealing with multidimensional characters, several situations. I was in the grounds of the novel, and I plunged in. Now I write both. Short story writing is a way of thinking, so I always write them. I love the risk of both.
Don’t forget to check out the rest…. here.
It’s here!
The monthly writing news and submission opportunities for you writers out there. Compiled for my blog for Word Factory every month just for you.
Good luck!
Recently, I travelled to Mexico with The British Council to read my short stories and talk about the state of the short story in the UK. I was asked to do a blog post for their ‘Voices Magazine’ based on questions the editor sent me.
A brief snip…
‘You could perhaps draw the following analogy to compare the two: a short story would be like producing a photograph, while a novel would be more like making a film. A photographer will be thinking about every tiny detail in the frame and how it conveys meaning. It can be a character portrait or a moment captured in time. The novel, like a film, can take us on a journey, capture many lives, cover lifetimes/generations, discuss a society or the history of a culture. For example, when I wanted to capture what it was like for a whole generation of children to grow up in Northern Ireland knowing nothing else but The Troubles, I knew that this had to be done in a novel. To describe the day-to-day life and the cumulative effect of living in fear, on one boy, his family and the community at large, the reader needed to spend time with that boy, in that community.’
Read more here. Find out about my short story class in London on Novemeber 7th here.
Last week the writer Avalina Kreska wrote a fantastic short, review of The Good Son on her blog. She said – ahem – ‘A masterpiece – a must-read – beautiful – stirring – surely there will be a film…’
Of course I was overjoyed. But then came this…
Avalina Kreska’s Incredible Comic Strip
I was completely blown away. Its so funny, original, quirky and imaginative… I’ve never seen a response to a book like this. And I’m much better looking in this so pretty chuffed.
If you like it and fancy contacting Avalina about her work with comics you can do so here. I’m going to get mine printed and framed.
Thanks Avalina!
