Wow. Very grateful to Neil Hegarty for his lovely remarks about ‘I Hear You’ last night on RTÉ One Arena choosing them as great examples of radio writing leading Tristan Rosenstock to say ‘sounds like the collection is a manual for entering the Francis McManus Award.’. You can listen here.
You can enter the competition here.
You can buy your copy of ‘I hear You’ here.
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’
Paul McVeigh, Emma Donoghue and Neil Hegarty have come together as editor and contributors to a new book, Queer Love: An Anthology of Irish Fiction, published byThe Munster Literature Centre.
As well as talking about their own stories, RTÉ Arena asks the trio to choose a work by another that was pivotal in their lives as young gay people – listen above.
You can listen here.
We’ll be talking the anthology I edited called ‘Queer Love’. Please tune in if you fancy – you can use this link.
‘demonstrates why queer writers excel at writing’ The Irish Times
Paul McVeigh 