Please come and join me to celebrate Book Week NI in Lisburn Library on Oct 21.
Book your free ticket at: lisburnlibrary@librariesni.org.uk
BOOK WEEK NI
author interview
Red Line Book Festival
Join award-winning author Paul McVeigh as he discusses his new short story collection, I Hear You, with journalist and critic Niamh Donnelly.
Paul McVeigh’s short stories have been in anthologies, journals and newspapers, and read on BBC Radio 3, 4 and 5, RTE Radio, as well as Sky ARTS. His ten-part short story series, The Circus, aired on BBC Radio Ulster, BBC Radio Foyle and BBC Radio 4. He co-founded London Short Story Festival and has edited three anthologies. His collection of stories written for radio, I Hear You, was published in March 2025. His debut novel, The Good Son, won The Polari First Book Prize and The McCrae Literary Award and his writing has been translated into eight languages.
Niamh Donnelly is a journalist, critic, and writer from Dublin. A regular contributor to The Irish Times, she covers books, arts, and a wide range of other topics. Her work can also be found in Business Plus Magazine, The Irish Independent, New York Magazine, The Financial Times, The Business Post, The Sunday Times, and many other publications. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, The Dublin Review, Banshee, and elsewhere. She has been shortlisted for five Irish Journalism Awards.
| Date | Monday October 13th |
| Time | 7pm |
| Admission | Free, booking required |
| Venue | Lucan Library |
Free but booking required here.
Cork International Short Story Festival
So happy to be returning to this festival. Hope to see some of you there. Tickets here.
Peter Bradshaw & Paul McVeigh
9.00pm, Cork Arts Theatre | €5
Peter Bradshaw is an author and critic who has been chief film critic for The Guardian since 1999 and is also contributing editor of Esquire UK. His most recent publication is The Body In the Mobile Library and Other Stories and in addition he has written three novels and an edited selection of his Guardian reviews entitled The Films That Made Me. He also writes for radio and television and is currently co-writing a drama-thriller for Channel Four TV entitled I Am Not Alice Bell. He lives in London with his wife and son.
Buy The Body in the Mobile Library (Lightning Books).
“Bradshaw relishes the grotesque and improbable; his set-ups are outrageously inventive … Characters are sympathetically drawn and their longings, insecurities, vanities and weaknesses feel all too credible.” — Emma Beddington
Paul McVeigh‘s short stories have been in numerous anthologies including Being Various, The Art of the Glimpse and Common People. They have also appeared in The London Magazine, The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, on BBC Radio 3, 4, 5, RTÉ Radio 1, and Sky ARTS. His ten-part short story series, The Circus, aired on BBC Radio 4 in 2023 and was repeated on BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Radio Foyle. His debut collection of radio stories, I Hear You, was published by Salt in March 2025. Paul co-founded the London Short Story Festival and was associate director of Word Factory, described by The Guardian as ‘the UK’s national organisation for excellence in the short story.’
Visit the author’s website.
“This is a world of escape artists and fraudsters, of body swaps and comedy cuckoos, of misfits and trespassers of every ilk … where else would you want to be than amongst the outliers, where the tender, the vulnerable and the brave reside?” — Bernie McGill
(Moderator) Patrick Holloway’s debut novel, The Language of Remembering, is published by Epoque Press (2025). He is the winner of the Bath Short Story Award, The Allingham Fiction Prize, The Flash 500 Prize and The Molly Keane Creative Writing Prize. He is an editor of the literary journal The Four Faced Liar.
The Worm Hole Podcast
Charlie Place discusses with me about my time writing stories for the BBC.
Please note there are two incredibly mild swear words in this episode.
Appearance at Folkstone Book Festival
Short Stories: Adam Marek & Paul McVeigh
Sun 23 Nov 2025, 12th – Tickets here.
Two award-winning masters of the short story come together for an unmissable hour of fiction, feeling, and fierce imagination. Belfast-born Paul McVeigh – author of The Good Son and I Hear You and co-founder of the London Short Story Festival – writes with humour, compassion and razor-sharp insight. His work, celebrated internationally, explores working-class life, queer identity and the power of language to wound or redeem.
Folkestone-based Adam Marek – winner of the prestigious Arts Foundation Short Story Fellowship and author of The Universe Delivers the Enemy You Need – is known for his brilliantly strange, deeply human stories that bend reality and tap into the surreal edge of everyday life.
Together, McVeigh and Marek will read from their work, talk about their playfully different approaches to the form, and explore how short stories can capture the biggest questions in the smallest moments. Expect a rich conversation about craft, vulnerability, play, and why the short story continues to punch above its weight.
A must-attend for readers, writers, and anyone who believes in the power of a well-told tale to shake the world – or shift your soul.
You can also buy my radio short story collection, I Hear You, out now.
Writing Belfast: Stories Of A Changing City
Belfast Book Festival
Date Tuesday 10 June 2025
Time 8:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Price: Pay What You Decide – Recommended Price £12.50
Written with Paul McVeigh’s characteristic flair and Belfast wit, I Hear You (Salt, 2025) is a vibrant collection of short stories from the award-winning author of The Good Son.
Specially written for BBC Radio 4, the stories include a ten-part sequence set around Cliftonville Circus, where five roads meet in North Belfast and the old clashes with the new on diversity, social class, acceptance and change.
Paul will discuss his home city, Belfast, and how it has changed through his work; from Troubles era Ardoyne of The Good Son, post-lockdown north of the city in I Hear You and where its modern diversity can clash with the lingering past in his play Big Man. During the evening Actor Tony Flynn will also give readings from Paul’s work.
Join Paul in conversation with writer Cathy Galvin, founder of the short story organisation The Word Factory and The Sunday Times Short Story Award.
Stories That Stay – Event at Listowel Writers’ Week
Stories That Stay with Paul McVeigh, Andrew Meehan & Carol Drinkwater
Date: 29 May 2025
Venue: St John’s Theatre & Arts Centre
Join Paul McVeigh and Andrew Meehan as they discuss their latest works with Carol Drinkwater.
The power of storytelling, their diverse genres, and everything from dark humour and deep emotion to gripping tales of mystery and personal discovery will be explored by the trio.
Paul McVeigh’s I Hear You is a collection of short stories, written especially for BBC Radio 4. The moving short stories are brave, honest, raw and funny and feature the ten-part sequence: ‘The Circus’, set around Cliftonville Circus, where five roads meet in North Belfast.
Andrew Meehan’s much-anticipated Best Friends explores the depth of a relationship between two friends and the complexities of their bond in a world full of uncertainty.
Carol Drinkwater, known for her evocative memoirs and fiction, will share insights from her new book, Summer in Provence which will be published in July.
Tickets: Here.
I will also be at the prize-giving ceremony for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, the night before, as one of this year’s judges.
Interviewing Kit de Waal for Cork World Book Fest
The Best of Everything: Kit de Waal in conversation with Paul McVeigh.
Award-winning writer Kit de Waal in conversation with Paul McVeigh on her latest novel The Best of Everything which is released this month, April 2025.
Kit de Waal, born to an Irish mother and Caribbean father, was brought up among
the Irish community of Birmingham in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the
Costa First Novel Award, longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry
Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017. In 2022 it was adapted for television
by the BBC. It is now on the GCSE curriculum for schools.
Paul McVeigh’s short stories have been in anthologies, journals and newspapers, and read on BBC Radio 3, 4 and 5, RTE Radio, as well as Sky ARTS. He co-founded London Short Story Festival and has edited three anthologies.
Sunday 27 April 2025
River Lee Hotel | 3pm | Free – booking essential
Interviewing Lisa Harding & Kathleen Murray In Cork
Beautiful, Wilful & Adrift: Kathleen Murray and Lisa Harding. In conversation with Paul McVeigh.
If John Irving had been born in Carlow, he would have written The Deadwood Encore by Kathleen Murray. There are similarities in Murray’s tragicomedy, her colourful players, her celebration of the heroism involved in fraternal love. There’s so much here to delight in–fizzing dialogue, offbeat characters, flights of fancy and mad escapades… Kathleen has the guts to take on what’s miraculous and eerie, and spins Frank’s story shrewdly, irreverently, and fondly. A brilliant debut.’
‘Gothic and gloriously entertaining, Lisa Harding’s third novel arrives to fill the Secret History-shaped hole in your lives. Wilde is an elite university in Dublin, full of bright young people who talk about poetry and arthouse cinema, act in plays and have turbulent affairs. Jessica and Linda, friends since childhood, are immediately swept up by the glamour and romance. But then Linda meets Mark, a darkly enigmatic figure, and soon tragedy strikes.’ (The Guardian)
Saturday 26 April 2025
Triskel | 7pm | €5
Booking: https://triskelarts.ticketsolve.com/shows/873653553/events
London Launch of I Hear You at Word Factory
Tickets are selling fast for the London launch if ‘I Hear You’ at The Word Factory on March 21st. This will be a wonderful chance to celebrate with friends, old and new, and I’ll be back to my short story home. It has been too long. Thrilled that the brilliant Kit de Waal will be reading and leading a literary conversation with me.
The launch is at the beautiful Georgian venue, Bloomsbury’s Music Room. Hope to see you there and details – including how to pre-order a copy of the book – here.
*PLEASE NOTE BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE ON THE NIGHT BY CASH ONLY*
Paul McVeigh 