I Hear You

Writing Belfast: Stories Of A Changing City 

/ Paul McVeigh Writer / Leave a comment

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. 

Tickets here.

‘I Hear You’ Review in Bookmunch

/ Paul McVeigh Writer / Leave a comment

“Paul McVeigh has the rare gift of making optimism seem reasonable and an even greater gift for portraying characters who find value in their own lives and in their commitment to each other.”

A wonderful review of ‘I Hear You’ over at Bookmunch. Getting reviews is always nerve-wrecking and such a relief and then joyful when it’s a review like this.

“McVeigh has an enviable ability to create an immediately recognisable character from a quick glance and drawing out the relationships of disparate characters from the common situations that has shaped them. While each individual story can seem like a sketch, there is an overarching plot as the events of the talent competition unravel some relationships and force others into the open. Linking the stories further, there is the common theme: the ability to create one’s own family out of friendship when their own families let them down. No-one will close I Hear You without the life-affirming feeling that there are possibilities in every life.”

You can read there whole review here.

Buy here

Irish Times Review of ‘I Hear you’

/ Paul McVeigh Writer / Leave a comment

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.

Review of ‘I Hear You’

/ Paul McVeigh Writer / Leave a comment

“..in this collection, voice is of paramount importance. Each story is told from the point of view of a different character and they vary in age, sex and sexuality, from schoolgirls to drag queens, cleaners to abused wives and even a character peaking in English as their second language. McVeigh differentiates his characters with ease and skill, using language, style and structure to make each voice individual, distinctive and ultimately believable.”

Thanks to Cathy Brown for this lovely review of ‘I Hear You’ and The Good Son gets a great mention too.

I Hear You by Paul McVeigh #readingirelandmonth25

I Hear You: RTE Arena Interview

/ Paul McVeigh Writer / Leave a comment

I Hear You – Paul McVeigh

CLIP • 15 MINS • 03 MAR • ARENA

Writer Paul McVeigh on his new collection of short stories, I Hear You. 

“It’s been 10 years since Paul McVeigh’s debut novel The Good Sonhit bookshelves, its funny, touching tale of misfit schoolboy Mickey Donnelly’s determination to escape Troubles-plagued Ardoyne earning the author The Polari First Novel Prize and The McCrea Literary Award.

Since then he has edited a trio of short story and written a hit play, Big Man, which won an Irish Times Theatre Award when it was staged at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre in 2022. Now he returns to print with I Hear You a collection of short stories which were originally commissioned and broadcast by BBC Radio Four – he talks to RTÉ Arena above.

The collection includes a series of ten interlinked stories called The Circus which introduce a colourful selection of characters from the north Belfast streets, whose varied lives intersect thanks to a local talent competition. Their stories are told with McVeigh’s trademark warmth, wit and humour.”

I talked to RTE Arena about my debut collection of stories ‘I Hear You’

You can listen here.

Buy I Hear You.

Short Story v The Novel in Bookanista

/ Paul McVeigh Writer / Leave a comment

“I think that’s why a short story can be a good place to start when setting out to write prose. You can experiment with voices, characters, points of view, and so on. If the story isn’t working, you can abandon it and move to another idea. Starting by writing short stories is not to suggest that a short story is merely a stepping stone to writing novels. The short story is a glorious form in its own right, and mastering it can take many years.”

You can read the article here.

You can buy ‘I Hear you’ here.