Belfast

A vital chronicle of Belfast’s transformation

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A vital chronicle of Belfast’s transformation: Paul McVeigh’s stories

“McVeigh captures the ongoing journey of a place and its people learning to live with peace, facing the legacies of the past, and cautiously embracing a new, shared future.”

This is a wonderful review of the event on my work with Cathy Galvin & Tony Flynn at Belfast Book Festival by Natasha Lynch for Shared Future News. The event (and review) covered ‘The Good Son’, ‘Big Man’ and ‘I Hear You’.

You can read the full review here.

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Irish Times Review of ‘I Hear you’

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Thank you to novelist Neil Hegarty, for this lovely review of, I Hear You, in the Irish Times.

“My mind found an old shoebox full of memories, and as I opened it, the moths of the past flew out”: in The Singer, one of the short stories in Paul McVeigh’s vivid and memorable new collection, we meet a nameless female protagonist as she sifts through the stuff of her life. The scene is an ordinary family home in north Belfast – but as each of these stories reminds us, there is no such thing as an ordinary family or home. Rather, each family, home, life is invariably extraordinary, in myriad ways – and all we need do to see this is to pay attention.

The Singer is a story of sibling rivalry, envy, tension – and to add further to such pleasures, this is also a complex retelling of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? The protagonist’s sister (and indeed, her name is Jane) has always been the favourite one, the talented one, the one who triumphed at the local talent competition three years running – though also the one who even as a child liked to take nips from the bottle of cooking brandy in the kitchen cupboard. The other sister has gone off and earned a degree, has been good, has carved out a sensible place in the world – has been thoroughly eclipsed: but now she teeters on the edge of something remarkable, of a longed-for switch in life; and to add to her satisfaction, Jane has taken to calling from London, looking for money. There is sleekness in the telling, there is satisfaction in the glimpse of a happy ending – and best of all, this happy ending will not be for everyone.

The Singer is one element in The Circus, a sequence of linked stories that shows us a multifaceted society, and provides a much-needed corrective to the version of north Belfast glimpsed from time to time in the television news. Each story was originally written for radio, and this genesis explains the collection’s depth of colour and vividness of voice. And its variety: Paul McVeigh’s writing has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to working-class and queer representation, and this sustained energy flows through this collection, to illuminating effect – for this is a world of change, of openness, of the drunkenness of things being various.“

Read here.

Buy here.

28 Feb, Belfast Launch of I Hear You

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Launch: Book Launch of Paul McVeigh’s, I Hear You

Fri 28 Feb 2025 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM

Clifton House Belfast, BT15 1ES

Come join us for the Belfast-launch of the award-winning Belfast author Paul McVeigh’s BBC-commissioned short story collection. I Hear You is made up of 10 linked stories, plus an additional three – all of which were commissioned by, and read out on, BBC Radio 4, plus BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Radio Foyle.

Get your free tickets here.

Out March 3rd 2025

Interviewing Martina Devlin

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The Black Box

Wednesday 15 January, 1.00pm

Doors 12.30 | Unreserved seating 

£12:00 including lunch

Tickets

“Charlotte Brontë, who dazzled the world with some of literature’s most vital and richly-drawn characters, spent her brief but extraordinary life in search of love. She eventually found it with Arthur Bell, a reserved yet passionate Irishman. After marrying, the pair honeymooned in Ireland – a glimmer of happiness in a life shadowed by tragedy.

That moment of joy was destined to be short-lived however, as Brontë died just nine months into their marriage. Her genius, and the aura of mystery surrounding her, meant she’d been mythologised even within her own lifetime – a process which only intensified after her death.

Observed through the eyes of Mary Nicholls – who encountered Charlotte on that fateful journey to Ireland, and who went on to wed her widower Arthur –Charlotte is a story of three lives irrevocably intertwined. Bound by passion and obsession, friendship and loss, loyalty and deception – this a story of Brontë’s short but pivotal time in Ireland as never before told.

Martina Devlin’s enthralling new novel Charlotte weaves back and forth through Charlotte’s life, reflecting on the myths built around her by those who knew her, those who thought they knew her, and those who longed to know her. Above all, this is a story of fiction: who creates it, who lives it, who owns it.

‘Charlotte is elegant and sophisticated but also completely gripping. Martina Devlin brilliantly creates the world around this iconic writer, with characters who have the power to surprise and compel. I loved it.’ Emily Hourican

‘In Charlotte, the raw gold of Charlotte Brontë’s marriage to Arthur Nicholls has been wrought in a wonderful artefact; this is a beautiful novel full of mystery, intrigue and story.’ Carlo Gébler

‘A powerful and compelling novel that expertly imagines the lives and times of those closest to Brontë, and captivates the reader with its cleverness and eloquence.’ Mary Costello

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Martina Devlin has written novels, plays and short stories. She has won the Royal Society of Literature’s V.S. Pritchett Prize, a Hennessy Literary Award, and been shortlisted three times for the Irish Book Awards.

She writes a weekly current affairs column for the Irish Independent for which she has won a number of prizes, including National Newspapers of Ireland commentator of the year. She holds a PhD in literary practice from Trinity College Dublin.”

The Bray: Read by Roisin Gallagher Listen Now

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“A rare date for Julie and her husband Frankie turns sour when a toddler in the restaurant is let roam free, uncontrolled. Their own children are being minded by auntie Terry. On the way into Belfast city centre earlier, Julie and Frankie had passed near The Bray, where when she was a child her father had been shot dead for no reason at all.”

You can listen to my latest short story ‘The Bray’ read by this year’s Bafta-nominee, Roisin Gallagher.

The story was commissioned by Cliodhna Ni Anluain as part of the ‘Spoken Word’ series for RTE Radio 1 which includes Anne Enright, Lisa McInerney and Donal Ryan.

You can listen here.

I Hear You – Out march 2025

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“We are delighted to announce Paul McVeigh’s debut short story collection, I Hear You, will be published in March 2025.

This collection of Belfast stories, each written for BBC Radio 4, includes the ten-part sequence: ‘The Circus’, set around Cliftonville Circus, where five roads meet in the north of the city.

The Circus is five minutes from the nationalist Troubles flashpoint of Ardoyne, where Paul grew up. It’s close to Holy Cross Girls’ School, where protests targeting primary school children drew international attention. The Circus is situated in the poorest part of the Belfast – it is also the most divided. Each road leads to a different area – a different class – a different religion. The Circus explores where old Belfast clashes with the new around acceptance, change, class and diversity. But this is 2024 and a fresh energy exists.

Other stories include ‘Tickles’, a story about a man visiting his mother in a dementia ward where he finds he is the one who had forgotten important things; ‘Cuckoo’, about a man’s collapse and surgery – where he feels something more sinister has happened to him; and ‘Daddy Christmas’, where a gay man writes a letter to the son he never had.

Paul McVeigh said: “I’ve been working with BBC Radio 4 for the last ten years and it’s been a wonderful experience. I’ve learned so much about telling stories written to be heard. It’s also great to be back working with Salt again.”

Christopher Hamilton-Emery said: “We’re thrilled to be working with Paul again, this time on a stunning collection of radio-performed stories. With its humour, pathos and personal tragedies, Paul manages to find the emotional heart of each immersive drama, and puts us in the centre of modern Belfast with all of its contemporary complexity and painful legacies.”

Photo Essay in Burn Magazine

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Wee Muckers – Youth of Belfast | Toby Binder

»If I had been born at the top of my street, behind the corrugated-iron border, I would have been British. Incredible to think. My whole idea of myself, the attachments made to a culture, heritage, religion, nationalism and politics are all an accident of birth. I was one street away from being born my ‘enemy’« writes Paul McVeigh, Belfast born novelist and author of ‘The Good Son’.

Have a look at the full photo essay at Burn Magazine.

The Good Son 3rd Editon
You can buy here

Winner of The Polari First Novel Prize

‘A triumph of storytelling. An absolute gem.’ Donal Ryan

‘Raw, funny and endlessly entertaining’. Jonathan Coe

Interviewing Armistead Maupin

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Armistead Maupin is heading back out on the road and stopping off in Belfast’s Ulster Hall on 8 June 2022. And I get to interview him. Can’t tell you how much this means to me – I feel like I grew up with his characters.

‘Following a successful UK tour in 2019, the bestselling, much-loved author and LGBT activist, Armistead Maupin is bringing his brand new show to Belfast.

Maupin has been blazing a trail through US popular culture since the 1970’s, when his iconic and ground-breaking series Tales of the Citywas first published as a column in the San Francisco Chronicle. 

The novel series has been taking the literary world by storm ever since, and was recently adapted by Netflix into a critically acclaimed series, starring Laura Linney, Olympia Dukakis and Elliot Page.

Don’t miss the chance to join America’s ultimate storyteller, as he recounts his favourite tales from the past four decades, offering his own engaging observations on society and the world we inhabit.’

Tickets