You can watch my Bryan Washington interview for Cuirt International Festival of Literature here.
I hope you enjoy it.
Bryan Washington Event Available Online
literature festival
‘Queer Love’ event ‘unmissable’ says The Irish Times
Thanks to Martin Doyle for including West Cork Literary Festival ‘Queer Love’ talk on Tuesday 20th April as an unmissable event in The Irish Times.
The event will have me hosting James Hudson, Emer Lyons and Shannon Yee. Tickets 5euro available here.
Free Event: In Conversation Australian Writers Cate Kennedy and Paddy O’Reilly
Australian Writers Cate Kennedy and Paddy O’Reilly in Conversation with Paul McVeigh
About this Event
Cate Kennedy is a novelist, short story writer and poet whose work features in the school syllabus in Australia. When writing about her favourite Australian fiction, the late Eileen Battersby recommended Cate Kennedy’s second short story collection Like a House on Fire (2012) and said: ‘Australia’s response to the art of Alice Munro, Cate Kennedy is a singular artist who looks to the ordinary in a small rural community and is particularly astute on exploring the fallout left by the aftermath of the personal disasters that change everything. Her debut collection, Dark Roots (2006) heralded the arrival of a fully-formed master of the form ….’ The Irish Times
Paddy O’Reilly is a multiple award-winning Australian writer whose novels and stories have won and been shortlisted for many major awards, and have been published, anthologised and broadcast in Australia, China, Europe, the UK and the USA.
‘In her latest collection, Peripheral Vision, Paddy O’Reilly proves to be one of Australia’s most accomplished authors of the long-wave story. Peripheral Vision has expansive energy, and will fascinate readers with a taste for open endings and vivid voices.’ The Australian
In conversation with me! I hope you can come along. Book free here.
The Good Son: Won The Polari Prize & The McCrea Literary Award
“The Good Son is a work of genius from a splendid writer.”
Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler
“A triumph of storytelling. An absolute gem.” Donal Ryan
Interviewing Bryan Washington
April 24, 2021, 12:30pm Cúirt International Festival of Literature
ONLINE (YOUTUBE) / PAY WHAT YOU CAN
“A thoughtful, witty and heartfelt debut novel, Bryan Washington’s Memorial explores the challenges of intimacy, hard-won vulnerability and building relationships while dealing with your own shit. Fans of Sally Rooney will enjoy Memorial, a story about relationships and what binds us together. When Mike finds out his estranged father is dying, he leaves to visit him in Japan just as his mother arrives to visit, leaving her in the incapable hands of his live-in boyfriend, Benson. He and Mitsuko become unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that is at once moving and hilarious.”
“Bryan Washington is a writer from Houston. His fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, the BBC, Vulture and The Paris Review. He is also a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 winner, the recipient of an Ernest J. Gaines Award, a PEN/Robert W. Bingham prize finalist, a National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize finalist, the recipient of an O. Henry Award and the winner of the 2020 International Dylan Thomas Prize.
Bryan is joined in conversation by Paul McVeigh.”
‘A new vision for the 21st-century novel. It made me happy.’ Ocean Vuong
Your Local Arena presents: Three Irish Writers
Your Local Arena presents: Three Irish Writers
films, poetry, writing masterclass
Screening from 10am on Tuesday 10 November 2020 to 10pm on Saturday 14 November 2020
‘It has been said that the English hoard words like misers and the Irish spend them like sailors. This Arena film presents three great Irish masters of the English language, Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan. Anthony Cronin, poet, friend and fellow drinker, recalls their genius and their wild exploits in Dublin.’
First shown in 1991, Arena’s Three Irish Writers is a unique look at the social history of Dublin and three of its most infamous writers. A classic from the BBC archive, it offers a rare glimpse of an era long gone, when culture was part of the everyday and the everyday an intrinsic part of culture.
For five days only, Cúirt International Festival of Literature at Galway Arts Centre brings you this memorable Arena film, produced by Kay Meynell and Rosemary Wilton. Commenting on the film’s portrait of three brilliant writers and the times they lived in are four contemporary Irish authors: Jaki McCarrick, Paul McVeigh, Ciara Ní É and Jessica Traynor. Enjoy new poems inspired by the film from Belfast-Jamaican poet Raquel McKee and Irish-Indian British poet John Siddique, and learn how to start your own personal writing journey with a masterclass from acclaimed author Gabriel Gbadamosi. Watch here.
Your Local Arena is an Arts Council England-funded project, produced by Speaking Volumes and Lucy Hannah, featuring the BBC’s Arena film archive.
ARENA: Three Irish Writers (1991)
(Producers: Kate Meynell and Rosemary Wilton; series editors Nigel Finch and Anthony Wall)
Watch the BBC Arena film here.
Part of:
Cork Short Story Festival 2020: Niamh Campbell & Kit de Waal
Niamh Campbell & Kit de Waal in conversation with Paul McVeigh
Saturday
October 10th
7pm (€5)
Niamh Campbell was born in 1988 and grew up in Dublin. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Dublin Review, 3:AM, Banshee, gorse, Five Dials, and Tangerine. She was awarded a Next Generation literary bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland, and annual literary bursaries in 2018 and 2019. She holds a PhD in English from King’s College London and is a current postdoctoral fellow for the Arts Council of Ireland at Maynooth University. Her debut novel This Happy was published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2020. She was the winner of the 2020 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. She lives and works in Dublin.
Kit de Wall was born in Birmingham to an Irish mother, who was a childminder and foster carer and a Caribbean father. She worked for fifteen years in criminal and family law, was a magistrate for several years and sits on adoption panels. She used to advise Social Services on the care of foster children, and has written training manuals on adoption, foster care and judgecraft for members of the judiciary. Her writing has received numerous awards including the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2014 and 2015 and the SI Leeds Literary Reader’s Choice Prize 2014 and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. MY NAME IS LEON, her first novel was published in 2016 and shortlisted for the Costa Book Award. She has two children and lives in the West Midlands.
Paul McVeigh has written comedy, essays, flash fiction, a novel, plays and short stories, and his work has been performed on radio, stage and television, and published in seven languages. The Good Son is his first novel.
The 32: Cork Short Story Festival 2020
Irish Working Class Voices: Martin Doyle, Eoin MacNamee, Rosaleen McDonagh & Lynn Ruane in conversation with Paul McVeigh
Thursday October 8th 7pm
We have our first live event for the anthology although it’s not out until next year. You can pre-order here.
Here’s the blurb from Cork!
Martin Doyle edits the books section of The Irish Times in print and online. He joined the paper in 2007, having previously been on the staff of The Times for five years and serving as Editor of The Irish Post in London.
Eoin McNamee has written two novellas, The Last of Deeds, which was shortlisted for the 1989 Irish Times/Aer Lingus Award for Irish Literature, and Love in History. His novels include Resurrection Man, later made into a film, The Blue Tango, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and Orchid Blue.
Rosaleen McDonagh is a writer, activist and performer. She is a frequent contributor to Sunday Miscellany, RTE Radio 1 and is a columnist for The Irish Times. She is a member of Aosdána and worked on gender based violence for over ten years with Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre.
Lynn Ruane is a social activist and politician who has served as a member of Seanad Éireann since April 2016. Before entering politics, she developed community drug services and community initiatives over 15 years in Tallaght and Dublin’s Canal Communities.. Her first book, People Like Me, won non-fiction book of the year at the Irish Book Awards.
Paul McVeigh has written comedy, essays, flash fiction, a novel, plays and short stories, and his work has been performed on radio, stage and television, and published in seven languages. The Good Son is his first novel.
Podcast: JLF London on The Short Story
Chris Power, Namita Gokhale and Navtej Sarna in conversation with Paul McVeigh. This episode is a live session from JLF London at The British Library, June 19, 2019.
I hope you enjoy this conversation about the short story.
You can read my latest short story, The Swimmers, in Faber’s ‘Being Various’ Anthology of Irish Short Stories.
‘A very impressive tale from a writer I always enjoy reading – a powerful and gripping story’ Storgy
Me, Nicole Flattery, Lucy Caldwell & Lisa McInerney
Being Various: New Irish Short Stories
Edited By Lucy Caldwell
With Lisa McInerney, Nicole Flattery & Paul McVeigh
Celebrate the current golden age of the short story in Ireland with the publication of Being Various. A spellbinding selection of Ireland’s most exciting new writers anthologised by Belfast’s own Lucy Caldwell, who will be in conversation with three of the writers.
Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She is the author of three novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and a collection of short stories. Awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the George Devine Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Imison Award, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Canada & Europe), the Irish Playwrights’ and Screenwriters’ Guild Award, the Edge Hill Short Story Prize Readers’ Choice Award, a Fiction Uncovered Award, a K. Blundell Trust Award and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.
Lisa McInerney’s work has featured in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, Granta, The Guardian, BBC Radio 4and various anthologies. Her story Navigation was longlisted for the 2017 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. Her debut novel The Glorious Heresies won the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2016 Desmond Elliott Prize. Her second novel, The Blood Miracles, won the 2018 RSL Encore Award.
Nicole Flattery‘s stories have been published in The Irish Times, The Dublin Review, The White Review, Winter Papers and The Stinging Fly. She is a recipient of a Next Generation Artists’ Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and The White Review Short Story Prize. Originally from County Westmeath, Nicole now lives in Galway.
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.
Date Saturday 15 June 2019
Time 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Price£10 | £8
Me, Louise Doughty and Kit de Waal talk Working Class Writers
Common People: An Anthology Of Working-Class Writers
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
The Good Son 