fiction

Novel Writing Retreat in France May 10-17

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CIRCLE OF MISSE INTRODUCTION

Let’s start by saying that each course at Misse is an individual journey, we don’t believe in a “one size fits all” approach. Our goal is to meet you where you stand, to find out and identify where you want to land and to help you plot a journey there. To this end our courses are small with no more than six writers; this allows us to focus on your needs.

COURSE INTRODUCTION

During the week you will look at how to use in emotion in your writing, how to create memorable characters and how to edit your work. Paul will lead writing exercises, give talks using concrete examples from texts and help you fill your writer’s toolbox with skills you can apply to your work. There will also be plenty of time for questions and a session on how the industry works.

PRACTICALITIES

Course Length: One week. The week starts with a welcome introduction after you have settled in on Sunday evening, then wraps up with our open mic night on Saturday evening (7 nights).

Schedule: Morning: Teaching and one-to-one feedback sessions. Sessions can include excursions to a nearby market, chateau or other adventures. Writing/free time in the afternoon and early evening each day.

Travel Details: 

Free pick-up (Sunday) and drop-off (Sunday) at:

  • Saumur Station. Saumur is accessible by train from Nantes Atlantique International Airport, Tours airport and CDG airport in Paris.
    Full details here.
    • Pick-up 17:15
    • Drop-off 12:00 (or earlier if necessary)
  • You can also take the train to Thouars, our nearest town, and we’ll collect you
  • You can also drive. We’ll send directions and GPS coordinates.

Meals & Drinks: Misse is also home to the Loire Kitchen cooking school, so food is of a very high standard. Breakfast, lunch & dinner each day, including wine & cocktails. Coffee, tea, juices, soft drinks and snacks available all the time.

Accommodation: Misse guest rooms have been designed to be the perfect writer’s space year-round: you’ll have comfort, quiet, privacy and a wonderful view over your surroundings. All of our guest rooms have en suite bathrooms, good lighting, a desk and a comfortable chair. For more details see our rooms pagee.

Check out the website here.

Circle of Misse logo

The Paul McVeigh West Cork Residency 2026

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Applications are *CLOSED* for the Paul McVeigh Residency. Now in its third year, previous winners have gone on to get agents, book deals and win literary prizes. 

The residency will take place near Glengariff, in its stunning forest park, West Cork, from Sunday 25th January until Sunday 1st February 2026. The opportunity is for emerging writers of fiction and non-fiction aged 21 and over living in Ireland and the UK. 

What’s new this year? There are three places in total; two available in the cottage and one in the detached out building. Before applying please read the detailed description of the property below. 

There is a £20 application fee which entitles ALL applicants to three professional development sessions:

  1. An hour-long group zoom session on writing a query letter with Sam Blake and Maria McHale, Directors of Writers Ink. 
  2. An industry session by Writers and Artists Yearbook team on ‘How to Pitch Your Book’. This 30-minute session will look at ways to approach the challenge of summing up a whole book in so few words, discuss pitch research, and share examples of successful pitches that you can use as a model for your own. We’ll also discuss how pitches can differ depending on the kind of book you are writing (fiction genres, memoir and non-fiction), as well as how the pitch functions in the context of your submission package. The session will end with a brief Q&A, so come ready with your questions!
  3. A 30 min group zoom session on reading your work live with actor Tony Flynn. 

THE WINNERS

Pre Care:

The three writers will have an online session academic/author, Yvonne Battle-Felton, to discuss how to make the most of the residency. 

Standard class travel provided.

Welcome 

Anna Burtt and Paul McVeigh will greet the three winners to settle them into their accommodation and answer any questions. There will be a welcome dinner and drinks.

 ON RESIDENCY

During the residency the winners will get one-hour group sessions with Louis de Bernières, Irish Ficiton Laureate Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Martina Devlin, Kirsty Logan, Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler and Leone Ross.

The winners will be taken on a trip to the beautiful harbour town of Bantry to visit Bantry Bookshop where they will get one-on-one reading recommendations, receive €50 book tokens to spend in-shop and a special gift from the shop.

There will be a trip to Cork city to meet literary festival director, Pat Cotter, to talk about the industry and the festival circuit.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner provided – family style. Basic tea and coffee provided. Alcohol, food outside of meals, special food items must be covered by the individual.

AFTERCARE

1.   Anna Burtt will give each writer a half-hour publishing consultancy by zoom. 

2. Pervious residency winner, Patrick Holloway, will give a group zoom session on his experience as a debut novelist – getting an agent and a publishing deal. 

 3. All three residency winners will also receive a copy of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook and a bundle of W&A Writing Companion Guides. They’ll receive a year’s free subscription to the Writers & Artists Listings Subscription (a digital database of publishing industry contacts), which also includes access to Agent Pages – individual profiles for over 500 literary agents – to help writers personalise their approaches when submitting to literary agents.

4. The winners will get membership for Writing.ie – a platform for the writing community filled with advice and resources.

Entry Eligibility & How to apply

  1. Send an email to pmcveighresidency@gmail.com attaching 1000 word extract of your prose – fiction and non-fiction accepted. Include in the body of the email a short bio outlining your publication history, if any. 

*We are not looking for poetry at this time, thank you.

2. You must be available on the full dates of the residency – no changes possible.

3. Applicants must be 21 or over at time of residency.

4. Please put in your subject heading UK, or Ireland (if on the island of Ireland).

5. You can have had some short works published but not a solo book. (Poetry pamphlet/collections and self-published excepted)

6. Deadline: 30 November 2025

7. Please attach proof of payment. If not available, please provide date and time of payment.

7. Judges are Cathy Galvin, Paul McVeigh and previous residency winner Hilary White.

Longlist announced Friday December 5th.

Shortlist announced Friday December 12th.

Winners announced Friday December 19th.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

The two bedrooms in the cottage are in its converted attic. Three important things to consider; firstly, the short staircase to the attic very study but steep. Secondly, the bedrooms are adjoining. Thirdly, there is only one toilet/shower for you both to share and it is downstairs.

If the stairs are off-putting, the ground floor has a daybed that extends into a double. The out building is single floored but there is a slight grass incline to access it.

You are out in the countryside in the middle of national park with beautiful scenery and walks. The nearest village is Glengariff, a 10-15 min drive, and not walkable. I will be staying nearby and will have a car for excursions etc.

PLEASE CONSIDER THE ABOVE CAREFULLY BEFORE APPLYING. Questions to pmcveighresidency@gmail.com

Cork International Short Story Festival

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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 BradshawPeter 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 McVeighPaul 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.

Teaching Course at Look North Festival

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Workshop: On the Short-Story with Paul McVeigh

Sat 1 Mar 2025 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Girdwood, 10 Girdwood Avenue, Belfast, Antrim BT14 6EG

Tickets: Here

Paul has written short stories to be read out on the radio, the stage and television, as well as, in print, for anthologies, literary journals, magazines and newspapers. He will share his knowledge on writing stories for all these platforms and give practical helpful advice of how to approach them, in terms of how you write and what you do with your story once it’s finished. The workshop is a mix of advice from Paul’s professional experience and the tips he was given by editors, producers and publishers.

Paul’s short stories have been in anthologies, journals and newspapers, and read on BBC and RTE Radio,as well as, Sky ARTS. His ten-part story series, The Circus, aired on BBC Radio 4. He co-founded London Short Story Festival and edited three anthologies. His collection, I hear You, is out March 2025.

Out March 3rd 2025

The Winners of The Paul McVeigh Residency at The Harrison

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I’m excited to share the winners of this year’s residency at the beautiful Harrison Hotel. You can read a the long list of writing help the winners receive over at The Harrison website and while you’re there check out the amazing, muti-award-winning Harrison Hotel where they will stay for a week with host Melanie Harrision. Now to the winners…

Tenaya Steed is a visual artist and emerging writer. Her artwork has been supported by BBC Arts, Arts Council England, and The British Council. She is an alumni of The Stinging Fly 6-month fiction programme, and Granta’s Literary Short Fiction workshop. Her story, Heavenly Mutha, won The Michael McLaverty Short Story Award in 2024. Another story, Missing the Eclipse, was published in The Stinging Fly’s 2024 summer issue. She was selected for The Irish Writers Centre’s National Mentoring Programme 2024, paired with mentor Wendy Erskine. Tenaya lives in Dublin and teaches Illustration at the National College of Art and Design. She is currently working on her first book, Canada House, named after the since demolished council flats she started out in.

Leeor Ohayon is a writer from London, based in Norwich where he is working on his PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. His work has featured in the London Magazine, the White Review, Apartamento, Brick Lane Bookshop New Short Stories 2021 & 2023, Paper Brigade, RSL Review and Prospect Magazine.

And the Writing West Midlands is…

Jane Commane was born in Coventry and lives in Warwickshire. She is a tutor, mentor, writer of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, and director / editor at Nine Arches Press. Jane is alumni of Writing West Midlands’ Room 204 writer development scheme, and was awarded the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2017-18. Her first poetry collection Assembly Lines, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2018. Her poems have been anthologised in The Best British Poems (Salt Publishing), Being Human (Bloodaxe Books) and featured in The Guardian, and on BBC Radio 2, 4 and 6 Music. Jane has written essays about writing and the nature of creativity for several publications and anthologies, and co-wrote, with Jo Bell, the handbook and creative guide How to be a Poet (Nine Arches Press). She is currently working on both non-fiction and fiction writing projects; a book on living the creative life, and a novel set in the West Midland edgelands at the turn of the twenty-first century. www.janecommane.com

Congratulations to all the winners.

Interviewing Marlon James at ILFD

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Ten Years of Seven Killings

Marlon James

Celebrating the book’s tenth anniversary and his historic prize win, James takes the stage to discuss his work to date and how the success of A Brief History of Seven Killings shaped the trajectory of his writing career.

On December 3rd 1976 at around 8:30 PM, seven men armed with guns broke into 56 Hope Road where Bob Marley and his band were rehearsing for an upcoming gig. The gunmen managed to shoot Marley’s wife, his manager, a band employee, and Marley himself before fleeing the scene. Later, the gunmen would be tried and executed in a ghetto court with both the singer and his manager present.

A Brief History of Seven Killings reimagines this defining moment in the singer-songwriter’s storied life and career. Spanning three decades, its cast of characters range from drug dealers to journalists, ghosts to the CIA as they navigate the streets of 1970s Kingston, the crack houses of 1980s New York, and the radically altered Jamaica of the 1990s.

This masterpiece of speculative fiction won Marlon James the 2015 Man Booker Prize, making him the first ever Jamaican writer to win the prize. In this event celebrating the book’s tenth anniversary and his historic prize win, James takes the stage to discuss Marley’s legacy, his work to date, and how the success of the book shaped the trajectory of his writing career.

Marlon James is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf. A Brief History of Seven Killings won the 2015 Man Booker Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, and the Minnesota Book Award. His other publications include The Book of Night Women and John Crow’s Devil.

This event will be chaired by writer Paul McVeigh, Paul’s debut novel, The Good Son, won The Polari First Novel Prize and The McCrea Literary Award. His short stories have appeared in anthologies, journals and his writing has been translated into seven languages.

Date : 

Sat 25 May

Time : 

19:00

Venue : 

Merrion Square Park – Speranza

Price : 

€20 / €18

Book here.