Paul McVeigh launches The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working Class Voices
Delighted that The 32 was covered by Hot Press. Here’s a taste…
Kevin Barry, Roddy Doyle and Lisa McInerney are among the contributors to the upcoming collection of essays.
Following the success of Kit de Waal’s Common People: An Anthology of Working Class Writers, Belfast author Paul McVeigh has announced the launch of The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working Class Voices on Unbound – the world’s first crowdfunding publisher.
Bringing together 16 published writers and 16 new voices to share their experiences of being working class in Ireland, The 32 will feature essays from Kevin Barry, Lisa McInerney, Roddy Doyle, Senator Lynne Ruane, Dermot Bolger, among many others.
Award-winning author Paul McVeigh, who featured in Kit de Waal’s Common People is set to edit the anthology.
“Too often, working class writers find that the hurdles they have to leap are higher and harder to cross than for writers from more affluent backgrounds,” states the project’s synopsis. “The 32 will see writers who have made that leap reach back to give a helping hand to those coming up behind.
“We read because we want to experience lives and emotions beyond our own, to learn, to see with others’ eyes – without new working class voices, without the vital reflection of real lives, or role models for working class readers and writers, literature will be poorer. We will all be poorer.”
Please consider pledging here.
The 32 is launched on the Unbound site. The Bookseller covered the launch here.
Please pledge to read 16 new pieces of work from the best writers in the country and help 16 new writers from working class backgrounds at the same time!
In a recent documentary on BBC Radio 4, novelist Kit de Waal asked ‘where are the working class writers?’ The answer is ‘right here’ in The 32.
Inspired by a shared concern that working class voices are increasingly absent from the pages of books and newspapers, Kit de Waal came together with publishers Unbound to create the hugely successful Common People anthology.
The Observer recently described Kit de Waal’s My Name Is Leon and my novel The Good Son as the ‘exceptional working-class novels from the last few years’ so it seems apt that Kit passes the baton to me to edit The 32: An Anthology of Irish Working Class Voices.
Like Common People, The 32 will be a collection of essays and memoir, bringing together sixteen well-known writers from working class backgrounds with an equal number of new and emerging writers from all over the island of Ireland.
These new writers will be selected by an open call and we are working with the Cork World Book Festival, Irish Writers Centre, Munster Literature Centre, and Words Ireland to provide additional support.
Too often, working class writers find that the hurdles they have to leap are higher and harder to cross than for writers from more affluent backgrounds. The 32 will see writers who have made that leap reach back to give a helping hand to those coming up behind.
We read because we want to experience lives and emotions beyond our own, to learn, to see with others’ eyes – without new working class voices, without the vital reflection of real lives, or role models for working class readers and writers, literature will be poorer. We will all be poorer. Pledge for The 32 and join these writers to help to make a difference.
Contributors So Far Include:
Claire Allan
Kevin Barry
Dermot Bolger
June Caldwell
Martin Doyle
Roddy Doyle
Rosaleen McDonagh
Lisa McInerney
Dave Lordan
Danielle McLaughlin
Eoin McNamee
Melatu Uche Okorie
Senator Lynne Ruane
Rick O’Shea
Dr Michael Pierse
Please pledge if you can!
Me and Kit in Morges
Well, this is a corker.
Do fiction writers have a responsibility to engage with politics? The line between fiction and nonfiction is constantly blurred, especially in the post-truth climate of today. Fiction reflects the world around us, and the world around us at this particular moment in time is in crisis: politically, socially and culturally.
And so, in this tumultuous political climate, this panel will raise, and attempt to answer questions such as, whether fiction writers hold a responsibility to engage with and write about politics?; whether fiction can affect politics?; and whether all fiction is political?
Making up stories is an inherently political act, but that doesn’t mean that the stories are about politics. Does fiction have the ability to change minds? Come and enter into the conversation with these four writers as they discuss and shed light upon a question of pressing importance.
Hope to see some of you there.
Lovely to see this praise for The Good Son from author Kerry Hudson in The Observer newspaper yesterday;
“When I think of exceptional working-class novels from the last few years, I inevitably think of Kit de Waal’s My Name Is Leon and Paul McVeigh’s The Good Son, both skilfully written books about two very different boys’ challenges growing up in working-class environments.”
She also mentions de Waal’s Common People Anthology out next year which includes my first piece of memoir. You can head over and read the whole article here.
Last week I did an event at the LSE for the Royal Society of Literature with academic Dr Aaron Reeves and novelist Kit de Waal. We read from our work and talked about literature and working class lives. You can listen to it here.
Common People, Kit’s anthology of working class writers to which I’m contributing is now 90% funded with Unbound.
“In the run up to the LSE Festival: Beveridge 2.0, rethinking the welfare state for the 21st Century, we bring together a panel to discuss the relationship between literature and poverty. They reflect on questions such as: do you need money to access literature? If not, why are there comparatively few working-class writers? And can literature actively play a part in reducing financial hardship?”
I’ll be sharing the stage with Kit de Waal again – we had a wonderful time at Le Livres sur les Quais in Morges, Switzerland, last year. Kit mentioned The Good Son in her article for the Guardian on working class literature this weekend. Kit also commissioned me for the Common People anthology currently 75% funded on Unbounders. I can’t wait.
Common People: An Anthology of Working Class Writers (edited by Kit de Waal)
Delighted to be part of this. Please pledge to Unbound.
Want to help unpublished working class writers get into print? Join Kit de Waal and her contributors to give new writers a platform…
In a recent documentary, novelist Kit de Waal asked ‘where are the working class writers?’ The answer is right here.
Inspired by a shared concern that working class voices are increasingly absent from the pages of books and newspapers, Kit de Waal has come together with Unbound and the regional writing development organisations, including New Writing North and Writing West Midlands, to do something about it.
Common People will be a collection of essays, poems and pieces of personal memoir, bringing together sixteen well-known writers from working class backgrounds with an equal number of brand new as-yet-unpublished writers from all over the UK.
These new writers will be selected by the regional writing development agencies, who will support and mentor them in the run-up to publication.
Too often, working class writers find that the hurdles they have to leap are higher and harder to cross than for writers from more affluent backgrounds. Common People will see writers who have made that leap reach back to give a helping hand to those coming up behind.
We read because we want to experience lives and emotions beyond our own, to learn, to see with others’ eyes – without new working class voices, without the vital reflection of real lives, or role models for working class readers and writers, literature will be poorer. We will all be poorer. Pledge for Common People and join these writers to help to make a difference.
Contributors Include:
Damian Barr
Malorie Blackman OBE
Lisa Blower
Jill Dawson
Louise Doughty
Stuart Maconie
Chris McCrudden
Lisa McInerney
Paul McVeigh
Daljit Nagra
Dr Dave O’Brien
Cathy Rentzenbrink
Anita Sethi
Adelle Stripe
Tony Walsh
Alex Wheatle
I’ve always wanted to go to Bali and I’m excited to be travelling there this October for the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.
My first event is a workshop: A Competitive Edge on October 26th.
“How do you get the attention of agents and editors? How is a story selected from hundreds of competition entries? Paul McVeigh has been on both sides – a writer who now judges international competitions. In this workshop, find out what judges and editors look for and how to avoid the rejection pile.”
My main event, Dazzling Debuts, in on my birthday – October 27th.
“You get one chance to make a first impression, and these authors did so with a splash! They take us on the journey from unpublished hopeful to bestseller lists, film deals and award ceremonies, and dare to take a look ahead at meeting the expectations that come with a dazzling debut.”
I’ll also sit on a panel on class The Last Taboo? on October 28th.
“Why is class such a taboo topic in the 21st century? It remains deeply embedded in most societies, yet many of us deny its existence with rhetoric around equal opportunity or meritocracy. Three writers who dare to speak its name take stock of how class plays out in their writing lives, both on and off the page.”
This trip is with the help of…
(This essay was first published in The Irish Times when my novel The Good Son was their book club choice.)
Reading What I Did on My Summer Holidays again was an unsettling experience. A peeking-through-your-fingers cringing you get looking at early work and the realisation that this was the beginning of a journey that would lead me here, a mind-boggling 17 years later. I lost this story when a hard drive got corrupted many years back, in fact, I lost the first draft of the novel at the same time. I was so disheartened I took a long break from writing and had to begin the novel again, from scratch, years later.
Being my first attempt at prose, never mind a short story, I now see the gaps and failings. I’d never even read a short story before writing one. Back then I was writing comedy shows in London, had done a little for TV and was teaching comedy sketch writing at Hampstead Theatre. After seeing one of my shows, author P-P Hartnett got in touch asking me to submit to a short story anthology he was editing. I hadn’t written prose since my essay What I Did On My Summer Holidays at school – most of this I’d invented to make me look good. So when I sat down to have a go at writing a short story I took the most common advice I’d heard – write what you know. I thought about the last time I’d written and used that title as a little wink to it. I thought of a moment in my childhood, on a visit to my Aunt’s, and used that as an intention. I had reached the word limit before I’d gotten to the lane up to my Aunt’s house – this was the moment the idea this story could become a novel first occurred to me. None of the action I’d written was autobiographical though the arena was. I edited down this chunk and added a fictionalized version of the scene I had originally intended at my Aunt’s. Most importantly, it was Mickey’s voice that came out. He’s been here ever since. Though he stays the same age and size in my head, like Bart Simpson, his personality has changed over the years. Mickey got craftier, funnier, dafter, stronger and braver with each draft of The Good Son.
The story got accepted by the editor, was published. I went on a mini-tour of Waterstones shops in the UK and Ireland. Bizarrely, I read in Waterstones Piccadilly, with whom I would later develop an important working relationship, Brighton where I would later live and The Good Son become the City Reads, Dublin where I will come discuss the book with Martin Doyle as a part of the Book Club and Belfast, where of course, the book is set. Never thought about that before – it’s like I’ve been reading one of those weird, cultish books on the power of coincidence.
Mickey is less resilient in this story than he would develop into for The Good Son. Still a thinker but of a different kind. In the novel he has progressed from see how bad it is? to things are bad but I will win. You can see in this story that although Mickey has flashes of humour, the overall tone is more sombre than in the novel and hints at darker stories underneath – for those of you who haven’t read The Good Son, the novel turns up the volume on the funny. Writing comedy for years made me want to write something dark. To swim in that part of me. I explored those darker stories in the first drafts of the novel and it was a very different book to the one that was published.
I left writing comedy not too long after this story and by the time I was doing the major re-writes about 4 years ago I had lost my need to distance myself from the comedy world and was ready to embrace it again.
I edited a huge amount of swearing out of the story for publishing here but there’s still quite a bit. The swearing wasn’t in there to shock but to address what I saw as the omission of swearing children in books. This runs closely with the absence of working class voices. I contend that Ireland has more working class writers and themes than the UK.
On the streets of Belfast, in the working class sectarian ghettoes of my day, swearing punctuated every sentence. Think of the movie portrayals of the Italian ghettoes of New York and you’re getting close. Of course, it’s related to working class culture. The obvious reason for this would be lack of education but it’s more complex and more powerful. It’s a badge of honour. We are happy as we are. Integrating swearing into everyday parlance is a literal fuck you to those who have – be that money or intelligence (really meaning education or the investment in it) or even talent. And as for those of their community who possessed any of these passports – permission to enter the world beyond, a way out – they need to be nifty with their tongue.
It’s not called a class war for nothing, and defecting is a betrayal. Swearing, harsh words, can be a tool of peer repression too, a whip to keep you in line. Perhaps a brutal environment begets a brutal language (also reflected in the harshness of our Belfast accents?) and a brutal socialisation. This is glimpsed in the story and explored in more depth in the novel. If you adapt how you speak – stop the swearing, for example, or speak softer, expand your vocabulary, use correct grammar – then you are rejecting your people, rejecting what your community stands for. You are saying the other world is better, that you aspire to have. If it is a world where excelling at harshness makes you a winner then being soft, believing in gentleness and kindness makes you a loser. You will be eaten up or mocked.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Swearing can be fun. The playfulness I’ve seen in the use of the filthiest of words, especially when coming from the unlikeliest mouth, has created some of my best childhood memories. Playing with the power of profane leads into the role of humour in harsh environments – I know Lisa McInerney is going to talk about this and I’m looking forward to hearing what she has to say. Playing with the harshness of words can take its power away too. Jostling with your friends and family – the Northern Irish slegging is there to keep you humble and thicken your skin. Harsher than slagging, it pushes the boundaries, testing just how much mockery and criticism a person can take before cracking and it often only ends when someone breaks.
A sharp wit can give you a place in this kind of world when brawn, connections or the threat violence are not your disposal. Mickey has that. He needs it.
As I said What I Did On My Summer Holidays was first time. Be retrospectively gentle with me.
(You can read What I Did On My Summer Holidays here.)
Winner of The Polari Prize
The Good Son 