Jamie Attenberg, Cate Kennedy, Rosie Schaap and me!

The Writing Life: Friendship, Travel & Creativity Across Continents

The Crescent is delighted to welcome two best-selling international authors to Belfast: Jami Attenberg (New Orleans-based author of seven books of fiction and most recently a memoir),  and Cate Kennedy (Australian-based author of two short story collections, a novel, three poetry collections and a memoir). Cate and Jami will be in conversation with Northern Ireland-based writers Roise Schaap and Paul McVeigh, to share their work and discuss travel, writing experience and friendship.

Jami Attenberg is the New York Times best-selling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All This Could Be Yours. She has contributed essays to the New York Times Magazinethe Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, and The Guardian, among other publications. She lives in New Orleans.

Cate Kennedy is the author of two short story collections, a novel, three poetry collections and a memoir.  Her awards include the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for Poetry for her collection The Taste of River Water (Scribe, 2011) and the NSW People’s Choice Award for her novel The World Beneath (Scribe 2009, published Australia, the U.S.A, the U.K, France and Hong Kong). Her short story collections are both on the Australian school syllabus as study texts.  She teaches widely both in Australia and the U.S., and has just completed her PhD in Creative Writing.

Rosie Schaap is the author of Drinking with Men: A Memoir and Becoming a Sommelier. From 2011 to 2017 she was a columnist for The New York Times Magazine. Her essays appear in numerous anthologies, most recently the new edition of Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York.  She teaches creative nonfiction at Fairleigh Dickinson University and the Irish Writers Centre and her next book, The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country, will be out next year. A native New Yorker, she has lived in the Glens of Antrim since 2019.

Paul McVeigh is a writer, author and performer. His novel, The Good Son, won The Polari First Novel Award and the McCrea Literary Award. He is the Editor of three anthologies, including, 32: An Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices, (Unbound), published in 2021. paulmcveighwriter.com

Date Monday 09 May 2022

Time 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM

Price£4

Book Now

FREE EVENT – Imagine Festival: The 32 Launch & Why We Need More Diversity In Publishing

The Launch of the 32: An Anthology of Working Class Voices – and Kit de Waal and Paul McVeigh: Why We Need More Diversity in Publishing 

The 32 Launch
Introduced by Kit de Waal and Editor Paul McVeigh with short readings from the Northern Irish contributors Riley Johnston, Dr Michael Pierse and Marc Gregg.

The 32 is the Irish version of ‘Common People’ anthology edited by Kit de Waal. It has 16 established Irish working class voices including Roddy Doyle, Kevin Barry, Lisa McInerney and Daniel McLaughlin, as well as, 16 new writers from across the island of Ireland. The anthology aims to go some way towards highlighting the lack of access working class writers have to the publishing industry.

This event will also include a free wine reception and refreshments. and is supported by The Irish Secretariat and Arts Council of Northern Ireland. 

The launch will include a conversation between two of our leading authors who have championed working class writers discuss the challenges faced by people from less affluent backgrounds in getting into print and how they can be overcome. They will discuss the lack of diversity in publishing and the importance of promoting a wider range of voices in literature.  The event will consider why the books industry still so white, middle-class and male and what steps can we take to make publishing more inclusive.

Crescent Arts Centre

Date Sunday 27 March 2022

Time 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM

Price – FREE

Book Now

27 Mar, Mairtín Crawford Award: Preparing Short Stories For Submission (Online)

Date Saturday 27 March 2021

Time 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM

Price Free. Book NowMairtín Crawford Award: Preparing Short Stories for Submission

workshop

Join 2021 Short Story Judges Lucy Caldwell and Paul McVeigh in a lively conversation about submitting your work to Awards. Lucy and Paul will speak about their own experience of Awards – as writers and judges; the specificities of the Mairtín Crawford Award and practical approaches to assembling and presenting work for Submission. 

Lucy and Paul will be in conversation for about 45 minutes, then spend 30 minutes responding to your questions.

Please note that questions must be submitted in advance. To submit a question please email BBFSubmissions@CrescentArts.org by 5pm on Wednesday 24th March. Please include in the email that the question is for the Short Story Workshop. 

Can’t make the 27th? This workshop will be recorded and available to stream online afterwards. 

This event is free to attend and registration is essential. 

Lucy Caldwell is the author of four novels, including the forthcoming These Days (Faber, Spring 2022), two short story collections, including Intimacies, out this May, and several stage plays and radio dramas. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, her awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright, a Fiction Uncovered Award and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. In 2019, she edited Being Various, the latest volume in the ongoing Faber series of New Irish Short Stories.

Paul McVeigh‘s debut novel, The Good Son, won The Polari First Novel Prize and The McCrea Literary Award and was shortlisted for many others including the Prix du Roman Cezam in France. His short stories have appeared in Faber’s Being Various, Kit de Waal’s Common PeopleThe Art of the Glimpse and have been read on Radio 4 and Sky Arts. He is associate director of Word Factory ‘the national organisation for excellence in the short story’ The Guardian, and he co-founded London Short Story Festival. Paul has edited Belfast StoriesQueer Love: Anthology of Irish Fiction and The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working Class Voices.

Me, John Boyne, Kit de Waal & Roddy Doyle

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Well, this is a corker.

The Politics Of Fiction

Date Saturday 15 June 2019
Time 8:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Price£12 | £10
Venue: The Crescent Arts Centre

A Panel Discussion With Roddy Doyle, John Boyne & Kit De Waal Chaired By Paul McVeigh

Do fiction writers have a responsibility to engage with politics? The line between fiction and nonfiction is constantly blurred, especially in the post-truth climate of today. Fiction reflects the world around us, and the world around us at this particular moment in time is in crisis: politically, socially and culturally.

And so, in this tumultuous political climate, this panel will raise, and attempt to answer questions such as, whether fiction writers hold a responsibility to engage with and write about politics?; whether fiction can affect politics?; and whether all fiction is political?

Making up stories is an inherently political act, but that doesn’t mean that the stories are about politics. Does fiction have the ability to change minds? Come and enter into the conversation with these four writers as they discuss and shed light upon a question of pressing importance.

Hope to see some of you there.

Editor: Belfast Stories Anthology

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Join Doire Press for the launch of Belfast Stories. It is a collection of short fiction set throughout the neighbourhoods of the city, written by both established and emerging writers, who live in or have a strong connection to Belfast.

The writers in Belfast Stories include: Linda Anderson, Lucy Caldwell, Jan Carson, Wendy Erskine, Jamie Guiney, Peter Hollywood, Caoilinn Hughes, Rosemary Jenkinson, Winnie M Li, Bernie McGill, Michael Nolan, David Park, Glenn Patterson, Ian Sansom, Dawn Watson and Shannon Yee.

The anthology also features photos and background information on each neighbourhood, as well as local listings and a map displaying where each of the stories takes place.

The preface and photos are by Malachi O’Doherty.

This launch event will include readings by some of the writers featured in the anthology, including Jan Carson, Bernie McGill, Dawn Watson and Shannon Yee, among others, and will be launched by Damian Smyth.

Date Sunday 09 June 2019
Time 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
PriceA Free Event

 

Me, Louise Doughty and Kit de Waal talk Working Class Writers

Common People: An Anthology Of Working-Class Writers

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Kit De Waal, Paul McVeigh & Louise Doughty

I’m really looking forward to this event at Belfast Book Festival and this one will be a corker with the two authors I admire and also love spending time with. Here’s the burb!

“This new anthology of writing has been collated by Kit de Waal in response to a concern that the working-class voice is still a marginalised one.

Bringing together thirty-three contributors, Common People is a book of essays, poetry and memoir that reflects upon the diverse experiences of growing up working-class.

A celebration told through the eyes of some of our most celebrated writers and brand new as-yet-unpublished writers.

Join Kit de Waal, Paul McVeigh and Louise Doughty as they discuss writing that seeks to illuminate the voices of the many not the few.

Kit de Waal was born in Birmingham to an Irish mother and a Caribbean father. She has published two novels, My Name is Leon and The Trick to Time. My Name is Leon, her debut novel, was an international bestseller and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year in 2016. Her second novel, The Trick to Time, followed in April 2018. She established the Kit de Waal Creative Writing Scholarship at Birkbeck University to help improve working-class representation in the arts.

Paul McVeigh was born in Belfast. He is the author of one novel, The Good Son, which won The Polari First Novel Prize and The McCrea Literary Award. He is also the author of many essays, plays and short stories which have been read on BBC Radio 3, 4 and 5.

Born in the East Midlands and grew up in Rutland, Louise Doughty has published ninenovels, including Black Water and Apple Tree Yard which was adapted into a BBC series. She is the author of nine novels, including Black Water which was nominated as one of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Apple Tree Yard which was adapted into a BBC series starring Emily Watson. Her novels have been nominated for the Costa Novel Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction, among others. She is also the author of many radio dramas, short stories and one non-fiction book A Novel in a Year.”

Date Friday 14 June 2019
Time 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Price£10 | £8

 

Interviewing Sarah Perry

An Evening with Sarah Perry

Thursday 22nd November 19:00 – 21:00

at Crescent Arts Centre Cube, 2-4 University Road, Belfast , BT7 1NH

I’ll be interviewing the wonderful Sarah Perry in Belfast in November. I read with Sarah a few years back at a festival in Ballycastle, Northern Ireland. Here’s what Waterstones said…

“We are thrilled to welcome Sarah Perry, the author of 2016’s Waterstones Book of the YearThe Essex Serpent, to Belfast in conversation with Paul McVeigh to discuss her new novel Melmoth.

Sarah Perry is the UK’s most extraordinary writer of Gothic literature. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway. She has been the writer in residence at Gladstone’s Library and the UNESCO World City of Literature Writer in Residence in Prague. After Me Comes the Flood, her first novel, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Folio Prize, and won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award in 2014. Her latest novel, The Essex Serpent, was a number one bestseller in hardback, Waterstones Book of the Year 2016, the British Book Awards Book of the Year 2017, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and Dylan Thomas Award, and longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017.

Melmoth is a profound, ambitiously realised work of fiction which asks fundamental questions about guilt, forgiveness, moral reckoning and how we come to terms with our actions in a conflicted world. A compulsive, terrifying and thoroughly modern Gothic novel, and a response to the Irish Gothic classic Melmoth the Wanderer.

Further details: 020892040159″

 

 

Interviewing Kit de Waal in Belfast

Kit De Waal: The Trick To Time

Date Thursday 13 September 2018
Time 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM
Price£8 | £6

with Paul McVeigh

I’m delighted to be working with Kit de Waal again. We read together at a festival in Morges and for the Royal Society of Literature in London. I’ve also interviewed her for The Irish Times. This time I’ll be interviewing her live in Belfast. Here’s the blurb…

The Crescent is delighted to welcome to Belfast, the author of the Costa shortlisted and Irish Novel of the Year award winning novel, My Name is Leon, Kit De Waal for a Belfast Book Festival Fringe event. She is joining us to discuss her latest novel, The Trick To Time; an unforgettable love story.

Birmingham, 1972. Mona is a young Irish girl in a big city, with the thrill of a new job and a room of her own in a busy boarding house. On her first night out in town, she meets William, a charming Irish boy with an easy smile and an open face. They embark upon a dizzying love affair, a whirlwind marriage, an unexpected pregnancy – before a sudden tragedy tears them apart.

Decades later, Mona pieces together the memories of the years that separate them. But can she ever learn to love again?

The Trick to Time is an unforgettable tale of grief, longing, and a love that lasts a lifetime.

‘Weaving tragedy and joy, big themes and the minutiae of life, this is a love story to take on the classics’ – Emerald Street

Kit de Waal, born to an Irish mother and Caribbean father, was brought up among the Irish community of Birmingham in the 60’s and 70’s. Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, long-listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017.

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Kit and me read together at a festival in  Morges

 

I’m MCing Taking the Mic – Northern Takeover

I’ve MCed a fiction night with authors I knew. I’ve filled in once in an emergency at a Word Factory in London. I’ve never MCed an open-mic event – but there’s always a first time.
Here’s the details. Hope to see some of you there.
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“This month we’ll be taking our much loved open-mic night to the Crescent Arts Centre Belfast for Takin the Mic – Northern Takeover (and read more here).
The event will be MCed by writer Paul McVeigh and we’ll be curating a number of fantastic spoken word performers including Abby Oliveira as well as the usual open mic performers.
We want to bring as many people with us to Belfast and to facilitate this we’ll be organising a free bus which will departing from the Irish Writers Centre at 5pm on Friday 26 March.”
Details
Bus from Irish Writers Centre
Date: Friday 26 March
Time: 5pm
Takin the Mic – Northern Takeover
Time: 7.30pm
Location: Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast

 

A few things to note: 

– Five mins per performer – poetry and fiction
– BYOB
– Slots are on a first come, first served basis
– Performers should sign up in advance via Eventbrite (free) – or contact Kate at events@irishwriterscentre.ie

Bare Fiction Short Story Prize

I’m judging this year’s Bare Fiction Short Story Prize which has opened for entires. If you’re based in Northern Ireland I’ll be running a class at the Crescent Arts Centre on August 5 called ‘That Killer First Page’ all about how you can make your work stand out to judges and editors. Get writing. Get submitting.

Bare Fiction Prize 2015 – Deadline October 31st

International awards for Poetry, Flash Fiction, and Short Story.

Our inaugural prize of 2014 was a great success with an extremely high standard of entries. You can see the results of last year’s competition by clicking here and you can read the winners in our March 2015 edition of the magazine.

2015 Short Story Judge

Paul McVeigh’s short fiction has been published in journals and anthologies and been commissioned by BBC Radio 4. His novel The Good Son was published by Salt Publishing in April 2015. He is the co-founder of London Short Story Festival and Associate Director at Word Factory.

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    BARE FICTION PRIZE 2015 – SHORT STORY ENTRY

    £8.00

Prizes (in each category)

  • 1st Prize: £500 
  • 2nd Prize: £200 
  • 3rd Prize: £100 
  • 2 x Highly Commended Award: £25

1st, 2nd & 3rd prize winners will be published in the Spring 2016 issue of Bare Fiction Magazine and on our website, with the prizes to be awarded at the Spring launch reading in London in March 2016 (date to be confirmed).

Cost per entry

Poetry (max 40 lines):
Flash Fiction (max 500 words):
Short Story (max 3000 words):

£5 / £3 for subscribers
£6 / £4 for subscribers
£8 / £6 for subscribers

You can subscribe during the submission process if you wish.

Payment can be made by Credit/Debit Card, PayPal or by Cheque (GBP Sterling).

Enter online or by post

Bare Fiction Prize 2015: Flyer + Entry Form