Hi there.
I’m at the Belfast Book Festival tomorrow, Sunday June 12, teaching my short story class That Killer First Page. I’ll be interviewing Frankie Gaffney and Rob Doyle on Monday 13th too – two Dublin authors who’ve written explosive books on modern, urban, Irish youth.
Hope to see some of you there.
Honoured to be sharing the stage with Fiona McFarlane and Simon van Booy in my favourite venue in the world! Hope some of you can some. Here’s the skinny…
Tonight three authors will debate the pleasures and pitfalls of the two forms as readers and writers of both. Award-winning Simon van Booy joins us from the USA and Fiona McFarlane visits us from Australia, making her first UK appearance. Paul McVeigh, author and co-founder of London Short Story Festival completes the panel with literary agent Carrie Kania chairing. Lively readings, engaging conversations and signings with a glass of wine.
Simon Van Booy is the author of three collections of short stories and three novels, with his most recent novel ‘Father’s Day’, just published in the UK by One World. In 2010, he won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award for his collection Love Begins in Winter. His fiction has been translated into seventeen languages.
Fiona McFarlane’s novel, The Night Guest, will be published in 19 countries and 15 languages, and won a NSW Premier’s Prize and Fiona was named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist for 2014. Fiona’s short stories have been published in the New Yorker her debut collection ‘The High Places’ is out now.
Paul McVeigh’s debut novel ‘The Good Son’ was chosen as Brighton’s City Reads 2016 and has been shortlisted for numerous awards. His short stories have been published in journals and anthologies and read on BBC Radio 4 and 5. Paul is also the co-founder of the London Short Story Festival and associate director of Word Factory the UK’s premier short story salon.
£5 tickets are available in store, by telephone 020 7851 2400 or by email:piccadilly@waterstones.com
The culmination of this year’s Brighton City Reads events celebrating my novel The Good Son will take place during The Brighton Festival as it in turn celebrates its 50th anniversary. Here’s the copy – to book click here.
“City Reads is Brighton & Hove’s annual ‘big read’ for adults. This year, people across the city have been reading, sharing and discussing Paul McVeigh’s astonishing debut,The Good Son. Set during the Troubles in 1980s Belfast, it’s an astute, assured and achingly funny novel about the complex nature of innocence and guilt. Paul McVeigh has written plays, comedy and short stories – he is also co-founder of London Short Story Festival. Join him in as he discusses his inspiration for the novel in this final event marking the culmination of City Reads 2016.”
I’ll be reading from The Good Son and will be interviewed by novelist and columnist Laura Lockington.
Writers Meet: Paul McVeigh and Fatma Cihan Akkartal.
If you’re in Istanbul tonight come along. The event made it into Cornucopia Magazine.
A wonderful event last night to raise funds for the old courthouse in Kinvara. Thanks to the generosity of writers Sarah Clancy, Lisa Quackinerney and N Ní Chonchúir who gave their time and talent to the help the local community here. You are amazing. And so I say good-bye to Kinvara and head home to Brighton. Thank you to Kinvara for having me and Liadain O’Donovan whose generosity I accepted in coming to Kinvara to get space to write. I’m so lucky to have a life where the currency is kindness and generosity. I think it’s going to be a good year.
Nuala O’Connor, Sarah Clancy, Lisa McInerney and me.
I’m reading at a fundraising event in Kinvara, Co Galway, alongside some amazing writers. Hope to see some of your there. I’ll also be running a class that day in Kinvara – check under my classes section 🙂
Well what a ride it has been. This year The Good Son was shortlisted for The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize and selected as Best of 2015 by The Reading Agency, Wales Arts Review and ELLE Magazine.
This is me reading from the first chapter at Word Factory, filmed for the first time. It was quite an informal affair with lots of friends and colleagues in the audience, as you will see (I’m Associate Director at Word Factory).
I hope you enjoy it.
Another wonderful review of The Good Son, this time from Susie Wild in Bare Fiction Magazine. Read the whole thing by clicking the link.
‘A vivid, playful, fence-hurdling, page-turning act of cocky bravado and endearing imagination. Mickey is a shining star of a protagonist; charming, erudite, and warmly, infectiously funny.
…a startling debut, McVeigh proves he more than warrants the literary company he keeps. The writing is sharp and the voice, a difficult one to sustain over a novel’s length, rarely falters. With pages so full of heart and helter-skelter movement, it is no surprise to learn that he also has a background in theatre. The pages of his first novel are alive with sparky dialogue and this visual language, the brash and the subtle, the compelling, the compassionate.
An engaging storyteller, I hope to see more from Paul McVeigh…’
You can hear me read from The Good Son Thursday Dec 3 at Waterstones Piccadilly at 6.30. For tickets to the Word Factory salon at the Waterstones Xmas evening email piccadilly@waterstones.com .
Lots of fun reading at City Reads Brighton last night. Reading alongside a long list of wonderful writers.
If you like live literature and you want to catch me reading you can come to Hastings on Oct 27 (my birthday) for my third Polari salon. It ‘s always an excellent line up. I met comedian Chris Green year’s ago when I was writing and directing comedy in London. I watched his first show and gave him some directing notes. I wonder if he’ll remember me? I hope to see some of you there.
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| This Year’s Prize |
Paul McVeigh 