Delighted that my Sunday Miscellany story, ‘Queen of the South’, has made it into print with this wonderful anthology edited by producer Sarah Binchy. Can’t wait to go through this and read all the stories from some of my favourite writers.
Date Sunday 09 June 2024
Time 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
Price: Pay What You Decide – Recommended Price £12.50
Join us for a special Belfast edition of the iconic RTÉ Radio 1 programme, Sunday Miscellany.
Recorded live in The Cube at The Crescent, join us for a magical mix of spoken word and live music.
Sunday Miscellany has been a weekend institution of Irish Radio since 1968 and we are delighted to welcome the programme back to Belfast Book Festival.
This special edition will include new writing and readings of work from Lucy Caldwell, Jan Carson, John Toal, Paul McVeigh, Marie Howe, Maria McManus, Glenn Patterson and Emily Byers Ferrian, and music from Scott Flanigan and Trú vocal ensemble.
RTÉ Sunday Miscellany is produced by Sarah Binchy.
A BBC Christmas Collection: 30 Festive Dramas and Stories
My short story ‘Daddy Christmas’ commissioned by Micheal Shannon at BBC Radio Ulster and which aired UK wide on Radio 4 on Christmas Dady 2022, has been included in this incredible collection.
A sparkling seasonal anthology of BBC dramas and readings
Christmas is the perfect time to curl up with a good story, and this cracking collection brings you 30 wonderfully diverse tales inspired by this most special of seasons. From Santa Claus, gift-giving and family gatherings, to an unexpected encounter in a snowstorm and an alternative take on the Nativity, they’re sure to get you in the festive mood.
Here are modern readings of classics such as Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Tree’, Anton Chekhov’s ‘At Christmas Time’, Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Fir Tree’, O Henry’s ‘The Gift of the Magi’, Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘Christmas Storms and Sunshine’ and Leo Tolstoy’s ‘Papa Panov’s Special Christmas’. Alongside them is some superb short fiction by contemporary authors, including Stella Duffy (‘South’), Paul McVeigh (‘Daddy Christmas’), Laura Barnett (‘Survivors’), and nine delightful stories by Alexander McCall Smith. Among the stellar narrators are Don Gilet, Nina Sosanya, Hannah Gordon, Stephanie Cole and Meera Syal.
Interspersed with these are a range of spellbinding plays, including Rachel Joyce’s poignant Christmas by the Lake; festive action comedy Lena Marsh, Live and Schticking! by Jeremy Front; a very unusual and very dangerous Santa in The Morpeth Carol by Timothy X Atack; and Robert Hudson and Marie Phillips’ epistolary animal tale, Some Hay in a Manger, introduced by Stephen Fry. All feature star casts including Niamh Cusack, Robert Lindsay, Sam Troughton, Clare Corbett, Tamsin Greig and Joel Fry.
Heartwarming and heartfelt, comic and bittersweet, moving and magical, these fantastic, evocative stories are a real Christmas treat.”
Buy here.
A New Short Story in Dementia-Inspired Anthology
To live with dementia is to develop extraordinary and various new ways of being – linguistically, cognitively and practically. The storyteller operates similarly, using words and ideas creatively to reveal a slightly different perspective of the world.
In this anthology of fourteen new short stories, commissioned by Jan Carson and Jane Lugea, some of the best contemporary writers from Ireland and the UK powerfully and poignantly explore the depths and breadth of the real dementia experience, traversing age, ethnicity, class and gender, sex and consent. Each writer’s story is drawn from their own personal experience of dementia and told with outrageous and dark humour, empathy and startling insight. Here are heroes and villains, tricksters and saints, mothers, fathers, lovers, friends, characters whose past has overshadowed their present and characters who are making a huge impact on the world they currently find themselves in. They might have dementia, but dementia is only a small part of who they are. They will challenge, frustrate, inspire and humble you.
Above all, these brilliant pieces of short fiction disrupt the perceived notions of what dementia is and, in their diversity, honesty and authenticity begin to normalise an illness that affects so many and break down the stigma endured by those living with it every day.
Suad Aldarra, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Jan Carson, Elaine Feeney, Oona Frawley, Sinéad Gleeson, Anna Jean Hughes, Caleb Klaces, Naomi Krüger, Henrietta McKervey, Paul McVeigh, Mary Morrissy, Nuala O’Connor, Chris Wright.
Copies will be available on the night or you can order here: newisland.ie/fiction/a-little-unsteadily
Find out more about the AHRC-funded research project based at Queen’s University Belfast, from which this anthology has emerged: http://www.blogs.qub.ac.uk/dementiafiction/
Link here.
“Ireland is more than one voice and in Queer Love, edited by Paul McVeigh, we see more than one Ireland. Love is a beautiful thing—especially in the hands of familiar writers like John Boyne, Emma Donoghue and Colm Tóbín—but in this anthology of short stories are new writers and new voices; it’s this combination which lends the collection its charm. Paul McVeigh steers the collection through our history, from a time of secrecy to the new freedoms of growing up gay in an era of the Yes vote.”
Delighted with this review in Books Ireland and you can it read it in full here.
You can buy the book here.
It’s here: The Art of the Glimpse, an anthology of 100 Irish short stories, edited by Sinead Gleeson and published by Head of Zeus. It features established and emerging voices and will be published in October 1st.
There will be stories by Samuel Beckett, Sally Rooney, William Trevor, Kevin Barry, Edna O’Brien, Claire-Louise Bennett, Bernard McLaverty, Anne Enright, Eimear Bride and many more.
Join me tomorrow on Facebook for the Alliance Française Live Series, a short live reading my short story Hollow, which was shortlisted for Irish Short Story of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and will appear in the upcoming The Art of the Glimpse – 100 Irish Short Stories.
I’m delighted that my short story, Hollow, will appear in The Art of the Glimpse, an anthology of 100 Irish short stories, edited by Sinead Gleeson and published by Head of Zeus. It features established and emerging voices and will be published in October 1st.
Hollow was shortlisted for Irish Short Story of the Year at the Irish Book Awards a couple of years back.
There will be stories by Samuel Beckett, Sally Rooney, William Trevor, Kevin Barry, Edna O’Brien, Claire-Louise Bennett, Bernard McLaverty, Anne Enright, Eimear Bride and many more.
Well, it’s getting close. You can get your hands on this in May 2019.
Lucy Caldwell has edited an anthology of Irish short stories, Being Various, and I was commisioned to take part.
Just look at the line-up!
Mine is the second story and I’ve been sent it to proof. Now, I’ve got a couple of little changes – a word here and there – time can bring to the surface some stumbling sentences or words that stand out and tenses that shifted. But I’ve also had second thoughts about the title. Not sure if I can change but I’ll find out soon enough.
I’m excited because I think it’s one of the best stories I’ve written. I would need to feel that being alongside – Darren Anderson, Kevin Barry, Jan Carson, Jill Crawford, Wendy Erskin, Nicole Flattery, Yan Ge, Sinead Gleeson, David Hayden, Arja Kajermo, Eimear McBride, Lisa McInerney, Belinda McKeon, Adrian McKinty, Danielle McLaughlin, Peter Murphy, Stuart Neville, Louise O’Neill, Sheila Purdy, Elske Rahill, Sally Rooney and Kit de Waal.
I’ll let you know more news as I find out.
Paul McVeigh 