Best thing about Fat Lab is that no one here has been shot.

The worst you can expect is for a stude…

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Monday Urgent is another from Take Me To Palestine Street, a collection set in The Holylands Belfast. If you read last month’s story, you alr…

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Looking for something different to do next Sunday in Dublin?

You’re all welcome to join myself and Hilary McCollum, creative activist and award-winning author, for a free-to-attend and inclusive event to hear all about her new novel As a Lover.

Date: Sunday 10 May 2026
Time: 2pm to 3.30 pm
Place: Hendrick Hotel, 6-11 Hendrick Street, Dublin, D07 A8N1

Set in jazz-era London, As a Lover interweaves a tender coming-of-age love story with the battle to save a novel that shook the establishment — Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. At Keep’er Lit there will be readings, an interview, and an audience Q&A with Hilary giving insight into the craft and the narrative.

Read an extract from As a Lover at Books Ireland. It will be available to buy on the day and if you wish to have a copy signed by the author, this will be your opportunity.

I will be working voluntarily for no fee to support We Are Not Numbers, an NGO for writers in Gaza (WANN). The We Are Not Numbers anthology is available to buy in Dublin at

Books Upstairs, Chapters Book Store, Dubray Books, and online at the We Are Not Numbers webpage

Please arrive at 2pm if you wish to order tea, coffee, drinks, which will be on sale at the bar in Hendrick Hotel. We will begin the readings and interview at 2.15 pm.

Let me know by reply here or DM to fionamkorourke@gmail.com if you will be attending, and please share this event with your friends, family and colleagues.

Keep’er Lit Comrades.

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This very short story Shopping List, was published in The Storms Journal V. It was inspired by a wedding shopping list that I found among my father’s papers. Today was/is his and my mother’s wedding anniversary.

Shopping List

Your father’s bullet point account of his wedding day is handwritten on a sheet of age freckled paper, beige on cream like Irish skin in summer. The sum of £120 sterling stands alone with no reason written in the column alongside it. Perhaps it’s the price of their honeymoon in Guernsey? Would a week away have cost that amount in the sixties? His handwriting is now more than 60 years old.

A wedding suit is the most expensive itemised cost at £28, followed by a wedding ring at £20. Not yet a twinkle in the eye, you will one day wear the black waistcoat of your father’s suit. A satin back, neat front pocket, and silver adjustable buckles at the sides. A fine piece of tailoring from the 60s will be socially acceptable in the 80s for all night parties in the Holylands of Belfast.

Your Mum’s wedding costs are not accounted for; maybe she kept it all in her head, and didn’t need to write a list. She is Southern Irish, he is Northern. Perhaps Nordies are more orderly and need to account, or it’s an engrained journalistic habit. All that you know about the wedding dress is that it was repurposed for their children’s christening gown.

A decorated cake, at £10, is almost as expensive as the total cost for food. A priest is paid half the price it takes to feed an Irish wedding party in England. A priest is worth half the price of the drink.

Guests and the newlyweds celebrate at a church hall in daylight. They fill their bellies with buffet food and drink. Sing songs while sitting at white-clothed trestles. The surfaces they set their plates on are covered-up tables used by painters/decorators. The air is a mix of wallpaper paste and emulsion, the waft of flowers, Old Spice, perfume. Cigarette ash peppers heavy white linen and fag butts are stubbed out in saucers.

A small band of musicians assembles then the trestles are abandoned. Fancy footwork breaks the shafts of sunlight that stream through the windows. Wooden floorboards pulse in surprise, more used to jumble sales and choirs. Old school waltzes are cheek-by-jowl with rock ‘n roll. Your Mum is the rock ‘n roll queen of Portlaoise. Your Dad is a string bean of song, both obscure and popular, a man of South Armagh.

This is the era where the bride disappears briefly to cast off her meringue white dress and gossamer veil to reappear in a dinky little skirt suit with three-quarter length sleeves and a large film star-ish button at the collar of a short fitted jacket. The skirt is pencil, below the knee, classic, like a character would wear in a Dorothy Parker story. The shoes are kitten heel court, not quite stiletto.

The wedding party yahoos and gulders, for they’re a jolly good couple. The few children not yet asleep under tables will race after a Morris Minor car that has a flapping “Just Married” sign and dangling tin cans that cause a mighty racket.

The guests sigh-laugh their last laughs while an enjoyable sadness makes their eyes water and brings a running-out-of-conversation silence on proceedings. The proceedings are no more. The mood is utter deflation. They cradle the shine of the happy couple’s absence then mooch off home or to the pub to be that sad Irish person in the corner.

An album of black and white images renders this day in film star quality. Your parents’ full wedding party photo is fictionalised in your first attempt at a full-length novel called Have You Found Luke? The novel wins a place at the Irish Novel Fair in 2016, where publishers and agents say that they don’t publish the Troubles because nobody will review a Troubles book. It’s tempting to ask are they scared that someone will put their windows in, because that’s how you feel about writing the Troubles.

Jake, one of your fictional characters in Have You Found Luke? will study his black and white photographic parents after they’ve both gone. He is trying to figure out how the house works and is willing the photo version of his Dad to send him a sign. When drafting the manuscript, the fictional photo feels like an essential item, a darling that you can’t kill, despite the fact that a workshop on the craft has already drummed it into you that photos in fiction are hackneyed and must be destroyed.

Twelve years down the line from when the photo was taken, a pet dog eats the cover of your parents’ leather-bound wedding album. Plus he bites the heads off the holy family statue gifted to them on their marriage. By then their silver punch bowl wedding present from a communist cousin antique dealer from Leitrim will be no stranger to the pawn shops of Kent.

In 2026 you are still using their wedding jug and bowl set for guests who take both milk and sugar. The milk jug and sugar bowl have lived in as many houses as you. They are 63 years old, scratched and slightly dented, and still going strong.

Looking for something different to do on a Sunday in Dublin?

You’re all welcome to join myself and Rosita Sweetman, one of Ireland’s foremost feminists and activists, for a free-to-attend and inclusive event to hear all about Girl With A Fork In A World Of Soup. We will be meeting on the ground floor level.

Date: Sunday 26 April 2026
Time: 11.30 am to 1.30 pm
Place: Arthaus Hotel, Dublin, D02 TW61

At Keep’er Lit there will be readings, an interview, and an audience Q&A with Rosita giving insight into the craft and the narrative. Judging by the author’s recent events at Rathmines Library, The United Arts Club, and Hodges Figgis, it promises to be an affirming and lively alternative to brunch or whatever you usually get up to on Sundays.

Read more about Rosita’s memoir in this Books Ireland Review. It will be available to buy on the day and if you wish to have a copy personally signed by the author, this will be your opportunity.

Can’t make it along? Please check out Menma Books for a copy, and Dublin book stores.

I will be working voluntarily for no fee to support We Are Not Numbers, an NGO for writers in Gaza (WANN). I hope to include readings from one or two of the WANN authors if they are available, and will keep you posted. The We Are Not Numbers anthology is available to buy in Dublin at

Books Upstairs, Chapters Book Store, Dubray Books, and online at the We Are Not Numbers webpage

Please arrive at 11.30 am if you wish to order tea, coffee, drinks, which will be on sale at the bar in Arthaus. We will begin the readings and interview at 11.45 am.

Let me know by reply here or DM to fionamkorourke@gmail.com if you will be attending, and please share with your friends, family and colleagues.

This first time writing collaboration between The Linen Hall Belfast and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature included 7 guest authors, and supported 20 emergent and established writers from around the Island.

Belfast author Wendy Erskine was special guest speaker at The Linen Hall and opened the showcase with an inspirational talk about the everyday work of being a writer, as well as reading from her award-winning novel The Benefactors.

Wendy advised that as a writer, all you have to offer is your voice and unique perspective, and to believe in that. Writing is magical, there is no need for a special category status or room of your own, just do the graft.

The 20 awardee writers read from new work created during the six online workshops to a full house audience. Their craft was an exciting and original mix of poetry, prologue as monologue, flash fiction, auto fiction, reflection, memoir, play monologue, surrealism & concretism, short story, novel sample, and spoken word.

Wendy responded to the showcase readers, congratulating the creativity of their pieces and their poise in sharing new work in a public forum.

Belfast is a UNESCO City of Music and thanks to Belfast city council for supporting musician/songwriter AOIBHA who provided musical interludes for the showcase.

As founder, curator, facilitator, then finally MC of the programme, I took the opportunity to talk about the frontline writers of the North who worked during the Troubles, and how writers now should cherish their relative freedom of expression, which is not a given on a world wide scale.

Thanks to Tamara Ní Coscair for the video of my introduction at the showcase.

Artist Tamara collaborated with Jo Morrigan-Black, one of the Island writers. Tamara's artistic work may be viewed on Instagram @tamaraniccoscair

Thanks to awardee writers Ger Walsh and Anne McDonald for their reflections on the programme and to the many awardee writers who posted on social media with the hashtag #IslandOfManyVoices

Island of Many Voices Reflection, Ger Walsh

Video reflection from Anne McDonald

Thanks to all the guest authors who provided written reflections on their Island of Many Voices experience. These reflections have been shared in previous substack posts.

Thanks also to special guest speaker Wendy Erskine for her endorsement of this exceptional writing community.

A Sofa of One’s Own

In the middle of a joyous …

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(Dear Reader, please forgive any spelling

mcsteaks, this is phone tapped)

Gimme Back My Mic

who gets to be

the karaoke

queen or king,

dissenter?

as they say in Wexford

you're quare caught

on the hop

you may blackguard,

tatarari, raise a figary

aye all right

sure why not

see a Joycean fan

wax lyrical Morrison

Van is the man, of course

no stranger to many

hallowed halls

the Balls on the Falls

but could he/would he lyric

the Linen Hall to gentle

tumble weed

as graceful as AOIFE?

poker-face hindsight vision

see Dublin diaspora man

and raise him a long list

those who write Baile Átha Cliath

vivid ragged rugged

northside southside

east west beyond

the Pale-side

raise a Nuala O'Connor

raise a Mary O'Donnell

raise a Lia Mills

a Liz McManus

a Nithy Casa

a Louise Nealon

an Anne Enright

an Amy Abdullah-Barry

a Cathy Sweeney

motherly daughterly

Lucy Sweeney-Byrne

let the list be relentless

let it rage on

Catherine Dunne

let it be Sree Sen

God Bless The Chickpea

let it be all the writers

showcased here

female, trans, male, queer

gathered in the oldest of libraries

not only the dead

and the white

to the scribes not mentioned

though our canonical demands

inclusivity be thy name

a page large enough writ

has not been invented

large is in charge

go large or go home

GET IN LANE

STAY IN LANE

words on a dual

carriageway

misread

by a wee girl

way before her lab

coat days —

Get in Larne

Stay in Larne

love a good inclusion

poetic license

those who don't verse

won't verse curse verse

like a fuckin trooper

a wheen a perspectives

as they say in Larne

As the founder, curator and facilitator of this collaboration between The Linen Hall (Belfast) and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, I’m happy to report that Island of Many Voices supported 20 emerging and established writers, and provided paid work for 8 authors on the island.

Scott is from North Belfast. His poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere. His pamphlet, Curfuffle (Lifeboat, 2019), was a Poetry Book Society Autumn Choice. In 2019, McKendry won a Patrick Kavanagh Award. In 2024 he was chosen by Paul Muldoon as Ireland Chair of Poetry’s Poet of Promise. His debut collection, GUB, is out now with Corsair (Little, Brown).

See below for YouTube and web links about Scott’s work.

The Monthly talks to Belfast based poet, Scott McKendry – Part 1 – A grandfather encourages a love of books and stories I do have some early memories but I think they’re sort of tarnished by the big fallacy that Protestants don’t tend to be artists or be interested in the arts. My grandfather (on my father’s side) used to pick me up every Friday afternoon from the school bus and we’d walk up the Shankill and go to the park or the fruit shop. After that we’d go to the Shankill Library and I’d get some books out (for full narrative click here).

University Days I dabbled a wee before I went to university. When I was working as an electrician, every now and again I’d be called into the office to work as an estimator. In my downtime I’d write short stories, or the beginnings of short stories. I had a look at some of my writing from that period a little while ago and it looked like it was influenced by Syd Barrett. It wasn’t too bad but it was a bit weird. I was also reading a lot of George Bernard Shaw, and that’s why I was humming and hawing. It was between doing Philosophy and Creative Writing.

Scott McKendry chats to Sean Rocks on RTE Radio 1 Arena about his collection Gub which is rooted in the language of his native city.

Scott at the John Hewitt Summer School paying tribute to Ciaran Carson.

GUB by Scott McKendry – reviewed on dig with it GUB is a parcel of poems, alive with Belfast vernacular and spitball zen. It sees heaven in a gravy chip. It is wise to Captain Beefheart, Snap! and Roxy Music. The guy in the ice cream van serves up Embassy Regal on the sly until he is shopped by a tout.

Curfuffle Lifeboat Press At its heart, this pamphlet comes to terms with generational trauma, class politics and the rituals and traditions of the poet’s native city. This stunning debut will stay with you and leave you crooning Abba Zaba go-zoom, babbette baboon!

Roll on Saturday morning.

I shared the first draft at a Claire Keegan fiction workshop, circa 2010, and since then I’ve returned almost every year to its protagonist Dan Delaney, to redraft his story.

The original title was Double Or Quits. Dan is an amalgamation of my osmosis of car crime in the North of Ireland, from my childhood until 2002.

Live. Breathe. Cars.

He’s walking again. Ankle deep clouds where he forges a slim path. The path closes quietly in his wake and he can see it become cloud again without having to look back. Next thing he’s skimming up the sides of the hospital highrise. His feet barely glance off the surface. He’s a stunt man for one of the actors in Hidden Tiger Crouching Dragon.

Really he’s out of here: down the corridor, past the nurses and the English doctor. On the street. Gliding up stairs like a swan, it doesn’t take a fizz. Home. Da’s face, through the gap in the kitchen door, startled out of a newspaper. Up on his feet, Sheila. Lookit, our Dan’s walking.

She pulls her head away from lighting a fag off the cooker flame. Da smiles in a I-knew-he-would-be-back fashion, then sinks into the paper again.

In Dan’s bedroom, cards are hung on the wall though it’s not his birthday. He glides to the window, attracted to a car engine sound. He bets that it’s a Beemer. He can nearly smell the colour, and how many miles are on the clock.

The BMW explodes through the window, pins him to the wall, the bonnet crumpled in a sneer. His legs are melting. He throws his head back. The cards above flap like clothes on the line. GET WELL SOON. The car engine hisses and spits.

Dan feels a dropping sensation. He might fall out of this bed. He screams or yells, it’s a trapped bird in his throat.

Always the snarl of morning traffic brings his dreams to ruination. Dan realises this in a half-awake reckoning. A radio voice says that summer is almost on us. It announces the exact date and time on this day in 2008, and skips through the promise of agreeable weather.

A nurse pulls the cord on the window blinds. Through the thin cubicle curtain he sees that the promised sun is pushing slats of light into the men’s ward. Someone bangs a window shut, cutting off the roar of cars. Dan clenches his torso against the bed.

Fully awake now and the tee shirt’s sticking to him. His heart thumps and he grips the mattress edges. Pain curdles below his bandages.

Now the thin curtain around his bed tears back, the noise of an industrial zip. A nurse unclips his chart from the bed’s rail.

‘Good morning, Dan. What’s up?’

‘Nothing,’ he tells her, ‘nothing’s up.’

‘Why were you yelling, then? They could hear you on the other side of Belfast.’

He shrugs. She doesn’t want an answer, she’s intent on his chart.

The breakfast trolley clatters through the double doors, bringing the waft of toast and farty eggs. He hears the slap of bare feet hit the floor in other curtained cubicles, they push into slippers, pad up the ward to the toilets.

The nurse lays her hand on his forehead.

‘You’re sweating, Dan.’

Is that right? Thank fuck for that, I thought I’d pissed myself. Aye, right through my forehead.

She looks at the chart again.

‘So Dan, the doctor will be doing the rounds some time. Those mates of yours better not come in here drunk again, all right? Tell them to stick to visiting hours.’

‘They’ll still be in their beds.’

She gives a wee snort of laughter.

‘I’m sure they will.’

‘Nurse?’ Dan says, ‘Do you know yet? When will I get home?’

She shrugs. ‘Your house needs adaptations. It’s up to the doctor.’ She walks off.

Aye. But I live in a flat.

The chart lies on the end of the bed. He lifts his head, digging his chin onto his clavicle. There’s a crick in his skull. He can see the top of the chart. DANIEL DELANEY. RTA. Letters after his name, ha ha ha ha.

Whatever else they wrote about him is blocked from his view by his own body.

Dan eats cornflakes with lukewarm milk. The radio plays The White Stripes, Seven Nation Army. He taps his spoon on the bowl to the first few beats. He hears a door bang, the wolf whistle of his brother Kevin and the snorty laughter of Boo. He sighs and lets the spoon drop in the bowl.

Boo says, ‘Stop whistling at nurses ya dozy cunt. They wouldn’t piss on boys like us if we were on fire.’

Kevin slurs, ‘Quiet, shhh …’

Boo goes top volume. ‘I am quiet, fuck sake.’

Boo slumps into Dan’s wheelchair. He has on a new Ben Sherman top. His legs stretch out under the bed. He has some mess on the knee of his jeans. Dan stares at it.

‘Chinese … takeaway. After the pub.’

‘What d’you have?’

‘Curry chips. Burnt the bake off me.’

His hair appears black, not brown, with the amount of product plastered on it. Stench of it but, with the beer and fags and Chinese. Dan’s stomach rolls.

Kevin sways beside the bed and gives Dan a slow wink. His eyes are bloodshot with squiggly lines. He reeks of drink and smoke too. He rubs the flat of the bed where Dan’s legs don’t reach.

‘Room for one more?’

He pushes away the table that holds the breakfast tray, sprawls sideways on the bed, with a long groan. He closes his eyes, folds his arms on his belly. He has one foot on the floor, one on the side rail. He has on a Red Hot Chili Peppers top.

‘It’s from a shop in Castlecourt. I bought it like. I know, don’t fuckin laugh. I’ll get you one for when you get out. Or for now. If you would wear it. In this place, like.’

He waves an arm about like he’s directing traffic.

‘So, what are yous at?’ Dan looks from Kevin to Boo.

‘What are we not at, you mean?’ Boo hunches and clutches his ribs and tries to hold in laughter, but he lets rip. Eejit rocks about in the wheelchair like he was born to it. ‘We are here to take your mind off things, Dan. Dan-Live-Breathe-Cars-Delaney.’

‘Fuck up dickwad,’ says Kevin. ‘Been to an all-nighter,’ he whispers loudly. ‘All the gang. They were all asking after ya..’

The man in the next bed tuts. He turns pages very quickly in a newspaper.

Boo lolls forward. ‘Mind that time, Dan, you in the Volvo? You were the first to go, man. Fuckin hero mcsqueero.’

‘Will ya keep it down a wee bit, like?’ Dan juts his head to the beds either side and makes his eyes bigger.

‘Here, listen to Dan-Dan! Gone all good living for the nurses. Come ooooon, you haven’t a leg to stand on. Dan fuckin live-breathe-cars Delaney.’

Kevin jerks upright. His mouth drops.

‘Shut the fuck up about legs, you ignorant wee bastard.’

Someone down the ward hisses:

‘That’s it, any more and I’m getting the security for them.’

Kevin pulls the top sheet over Dan’s bandaged half legs. He slides his arm behind his shoulder and pulls him forward. He tells Boo to make himself useful and sort out the pillows.

Kevin rubs the back of his hand along Dan’s jaw.

‘You growing a beard, wee man, or you just not shaving?’

Kevin stinks of rollies; his fingers are yellowed like an old man’s.

The boys are quiet for a while. Dan squeezes his eyes shut.

Boo whispers. ‘Them veins on his eyelids? Like spider legs so they are.’

Dan hears Kevin tut.

Boo whispers again. ‘Sorry, man. I’m still fuckin hammered.’

Kevin hisses. ‘Don’t wake him.’

Dan feels the mattress move, hears the squeak of the wheelchair, and the thud of one of them banging into his bedside locker.

Boo and Kevin leave, their trainers making kiss sounds on the floor. The whiff of beer and cigarettes stays in the warm air. The cigarettes especially.

It’s three weeks now since he had his last fag. A king-size in his hand smoked halfway. Just about to take a drag when the BMW crashed onto the pavement and pinned him against the wall. He had on dark navy jeans from Gap. Got in the sale the day before. They were a wee bit long. But it would’ve been alright to walk on the back hems. To rough them up. That’s what people do.

He hears a clinking noise and opens his eyes. It’s the wee ginger student nurse lifting the breakfast tray. She smiles and it seems she’s looking at his lower face. He touches scruffy stubble on his chin and she looks away.

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Aye, go on ahead, Dan.’

‘You know my jeans? I had on me, when I got here. What would’ve happened them?’

‘Oh, probably they would have been cut off and incinerated.’

‘Like my legs?’

The pink skin around her freckles pales and her smile gradually shrinks.

He stares at the ceiling and thinks about Kevin and Boo. Boo the fuckin eejit and his big mouth. You haven’t a leg to stand on. He’s right. Everyone else tangos round him. What do they think? If they don’t mention legs, or cars, or accidents that he’ll not notice that half of each leg is chopped off? He can’t go to the bog for a slash without someone pushing him in a wheelchair. Or he has to piss in a plastic bottle and wait for a person with rubber gloves to whisk it away and bring back an empty.

Boo’s not the worst neither. Some of them here, staff and patients, think he’s deaf or thick or something.

See that one in bed five – stop gawking at him, would ya – lost both his legs from the knee down.

Car crushed him against a wall. His own cousin. Desperate.

He was one himself. I know, a wee hood in the stolen cars. It’s bloody ironic all right.

He closes his eyes. Thirteen. Kevin and his mates went to Portrush. They got the train, went on the tear, then hotwired the first car they could find with enough petrol. A crappy oul lad silver Volvo.

It was always Dan, Ben and Boo knocking about together. They were waiting on Kevin, on a bit of road outside the old industrial estate, near the dual carriageway. The empty factories looked like charcoaled squares against the dark sky.

Friday night was show time; they’d been cheering on all the handbrake turns and doughnut skids scored into the road. It was like synchronized swimming, only in cars. Good motors from all over town. Beemers, Audis, Golfs, GTi, DTi, some near enough new.

A wee lad brought in a classic, dead old, like something out of a film. Mark II Capri, red body, black roof. Desperate but, what happened it. Abandoned in a factory car-park with the lock busted, the steering column banjaxed, the wires hanging out. Ben said it would have been better off burnt out, less hassle from the insurance. Dan pictures Ben stood there tapping his foot against the Capri’s tyre. His hands were in his hoody pocket, he was shaking his head and sighing. Ben was such a softie. Dan’s eyes go all hot and his throat closes.

All three tried to guess the makes of the cars before they burst round the corner. Dan always got it right,

You’re some jammy bastard, Dan Delaney.

He flipped the middle finger. Your ears are fucked, wee lad.

Mastermind. Dan Delaney, specialist subject – the individual sounds of car engines.

Then the screech of tyres and a set of full-beams came at them.

There’s your Kevin now. Boo stood with the legs apart, his hands beckoning at the flashing lights. Embarrassing or what! Volvo.

The Volvo near enough went into them. When Kevin threw it up on the pavement they didn’t move from the lamp post. The car stopped a few inches short. Kevin and four others piled out. Dan went over and kicked a tyre just like an oul lad.

Volvo. Nice. Old man’s car. Is this for collecting your pension? A wee bit of Sunday driving maybe?

Kevin dandered over his hands in his pockets.

Aye. Alright. If you’re so fuckin’ smart, let’s see you drive it then. Go on, Dan-Dan. Or maybe you’re too chicken shit.

He made the bwaaak-bwaaak noises, then everyone had a go, even Boo and Ben.

Kevin had his arm stretched out to the driver’s door, as if he were the real owner offering a test drive. And like what could Dan do? There was Kevin and four of his muckers, and Ben and Boo, eyes all wide, waiting for him to walk away so they could rip the piss.

Kevin raised the eyebrow at Dan, then at the car, and next thing there he was, sat in the driver’s seat pulling himself closer to the steering wheel, looking for the thing to move the seat higher. Boo and Ben piled in. Boo was saying fuck fuck fuck over and over. Ben was going on about his seat belt and which one did it go into. Boo twisted round to hit him a dig.

Shut up, you’re in a stolen car, fuck sake.

Kevin was all advice, one arm on the open door, one hand tapping the roof.

Clutch, brake, accelerator. Clutch out halfway, keep the revs steady when you take off, go easy first. Clutch when you change gear, clutch when you brake.

Kevin kept looking at Dan’s face. Dan nodded his head and his teeth gripped together tighter.

Dan’s voice came out wobbly, his words jumbled; he asked when would he know to change gear and brake and all that, and Kevin got down on his hunkers, leaned in on his shoulder.

Now don’t start crying on me, d’you hear me, wee man, or that’ll be the end of it.

Ben and Boo stopped their yakking. One of them burst a chewing gum bubble.

If you’re revving the guts out of her, go up a gear. If it sounds like she wants to die, go down. Look – first, second, third, fourth. Don’t worry about fifth for now. Push the gear stick down and down again for reverse. Look, it’s on this tiny diagram, see? Wee buns.

Then he messed Dan’s hair with the flat of his hand, leaving it spiked like a hedgehog.

Right, on ya go Sonic. One last thing – brake if you see a wall coming at you, scatter if you see the peelers.

Kevin banged the roof boom-boom.

Dan had been in cars with Kevin loads, watched the footwork and the one-handed steering, but he felt the jump of his heart in his chest, his throat, his head. There were ones sittingon the bonnet, bouncing the Volvo up and down; it squeaked like a rusty garden gate.

Go on, you boy, keep her lit.

Stop snoozin’, get movin’.

As he revved the accelerator heat flared in his cheeks. He did what Kevin said and put the foot down on the clutch. It wasn’t that easy, his leg was shaking. He pushed the gear stick into first and tapped a few more revs. Kevin’s mates jumped off the bonnet.

Watch out for the kangaroo juice, wee man.

Let the handbrake down, you bollox.

He eased his clutch foot up halfway and kept the revs going and then they were bumping off the pavement and the ones outside were cheering and yeeeoooing. Boo and Ben were in fits and high-fiving like they’d done something magic. Dan looked down to move up a gear, forgot to clutch and the engine gave this big roar, and he near shit a brick, thought he’d wrecked the car already.

Boo was beating the dash like a drum.

Dan the Man, go on!

Then it all started coming together. He got it into second, third, fourth. The car chugged and coughed, he went down a gear; it got noisier and whinier, he shifted up a gear. He leaned in to the steering to hug the corners, his feet seemed to know when to pump the brakes.

They didn’t go too far from the dead factories, but they were out for a good half hour. He had the Volvo up to seventy, eighty miles an hour. The rev count needle jumped when he put the foot down. He booted the car up and down the back roads. Every few minutes Ben gave him the thumbs-up in the mirror.

He took it up to ninety and said in a low voice:

This is it, boys. Live. Breathe. Cars.

They all nodded their heads slowly and repeatedly as if they were listening to music.

Dan took the Volvo back to where they’d started and Kevin waved them in under the lamp post. Dan buzzed the window down and set his elbow on the ledge. Kevin winked at him. You’re a natural. Now home for some sleepy Zeds. Dan got out and his legs had an uppy-downy sensation. Birds were cheeping away in the scrubby hedges. Paler stripes of sky pushed up behind the concrete buildings. Kevin’s mates were slapping Dan’s back.

Kevin had his hand on Dan’s shoulder as they sauntered off. He said he’d teach Dan how to do handbrake turns next time, he’d get him a quality screwdriver and show him how to hotwire, but first how to inch down a driver side window just enough to slip a skinny arm in. Dan looked back at the sorry car left with the doors wide open and the lights still on. Kevin looked too.

Aye. You’re always like that about your first.

That was Dan hooked but. Live. Breathe. Cars. Most weekends he was raking about in any type of car that could be relieved from its owner. Just for the buzz, he didn’t sell them on nor nothing. With the older cars you could screwdriver a lock, whack the steering column with a hammer, fizz the right wires together, and be away like a shot. The newer more techy ones with the immobilisers, he had to learn the skills like everyone else, but Kevin was patient enough.

Hobbies expanded and moved on. Friday nights, Saturday nights, plastered or stoned. Still he felt the biggest buzz was the speed of a car on a backroad. He’d be there screeching into some housing estate, lights from the peelers’ Land Rovers beaming up and down on speed ramps, flashing in the rear-view. Hadn’t a notion where he was going half the time; handbraking into cul-de-sacs, jumping out to scatter into some stranger’s back garden. He wore gloves. The boys took the piss. But they were handy enough when he was clawing his way up over a wall. And he never got done by the peelers. Not once.

o0o

Around eleven o’clock, when the domestic brings him tea in a small cup with a saucer, Dan asks her to close the curtains. He holds his arm over his eyes, pushes the top half of his body into the mattress to steady the dull pain. TV voices rant on about salad recipes and homemade lemonade. Adverts come and go: Pedigree dog food, Renault Clio, Audi Quattro, Cillit Bang. He drifts into a sleep, but if he dreams anything it’s gone when he jolts awake.

The reek of stewed meat hangs in the air. It’s almost lunchtime. A huddle of ghosts stands at the end of the bed. Students in white coats. They stand sideways, gazing at the English doctor. He doesn’t have a white coat; he’s in his shirtsleeves. A stethoscope dangles round his shoulders. He’s like a TV doc in Casualty, with the English accent and all.

‘… successful double amputation. A lucky young man, plenty of visitors to take his mind off things.’

The doc glances at Dan.

‘Did we wake you, young Delaney? Don’t mind this lot. Only up from college. Wet about the ears.’

The huddle laugh, turn and stare at Dan. The doc keeps talking.

‘So, on admission we check the system for previous records, right? In this Daniel Delaney was admitted back in two-thousand-and-four. Broken leg, wrist, fractures, multiple contusions …’ The doc looks down at a file. ‘Dan, you were battered to pieces, were you not? Was that a punishment thing?’

His face heats; the students’ eyes are on his half legs. One turns to another and circles his lips into a silent whistle.

A punishment thing. Dan breathes heavily. Shiny tracksuit bastard cunts. Stupid white trainers. Fat bastards. Bet you wish the peelers had you now, you wee scumbag. He’d already been off cars for three whole weeks when they dragged him into the alley. Three weeks after Ben died, not one car did he steal; he was in bits and not capable of gnawing on his own nails. Stay away from cars, Delaney. It’ll be bullets next time. The men left him on the ground, his nose beside rancid chicken bones and carrot peels from a burst rubbish bag. A pair of trainers walked back towards his face. Sure head on, a voice said, be with yous in a minute. I musta dropped my lighter. His Da’s voice. Da went down on his hunkers. Fucksake Dan, you have my heart broken.

In this hospital prison, the alley scene flashes in and out whenever it likes. And pictures of Ben too. Waxy, caked with make-up, a shining coffin. He wishes he was dead like Ben. Then he doesn’t. Then he does. The pain rallies up and down his thighs for it has nowhere else to go.

Ben’s gone four years now. His Da’s a total alco. No wonder, he was the one who found Ben strung up on the graveyard railings. It was in the paper and all about joyriders being crucified, but there were no nails used on Ben. They heard that the punishment squad set their bats down then tied Ben with rope to the fence so he couldn’t curl up into a ball.

‘OK, you lot, give this man some peace. Off to Bed Six and say good afternoon.’

The doc stalls while the huddle moves on. He grips Dan’s shoulder for a moment. His hand smells soapy clean.

‘Dan, don’t let the bastards grind you down, right? You’ve plenty of miles in you yet. Rehab, you’ll not know yourself. The prosthetics crew will have you up and running in no time.’

Dan’s voice comes out croaky. ‘Do you know yet? When can I go home?’

‘That’ll be down to the rehab team, I’m afraid. Adaptations to your Mum’s flat, all of that. I mean, do the lifts even work half the time? We’ve got to think ahead and plan.’

The doc squeezes his shoulder one more time and moves to the end of the bed. He holds the ends of the stethoscope like a mechanic with jump leads.

‘Dan, stay away from cars this time. There’s a good chap.’

I’m not a fuckin’ car thief any more, Dan screams inside his head. He clamps his arm over his eyes.

He should’ve just got into the stolen Beemer that day when his cousin brought it into the square. He could’ve taken over. Should’ve told him to get out to fuck, away home to his girlfriend. His cousin wasn’t fit to handle a car that size. The wee dickhead had only mastered Ford Fiestas with tiny engines. Dan could’ve sold it, made a small pile of notes.

At the afternoon visit, Da is all businesslike behind his newspaper, going on about the living room as a bedroom and a fold-down chair in the shower unit.

‘Anything you want, Son, it’s yours.’

‘Da, can we just go outside to the garden?’

Da puts down his paper and blinks.

‘Good idea, Son. Why not? Get you out into the air. Take your mind off things.’

There’s the big palaver of shrugging into a fleece – even though he’s not cold, but Da insists. Then more trial and error into the wheelchair. The spokes sound like a bike going up the ward. Da pushes him past the nurses’ station and the English doc looks up from a phone call, gives him a thumbs-up.

Outside, they sit in silence, near a fountain that’s not turned on. They watch a gang of patients in pyjamas lighting up cigs at a tall ashtray. Da coughs a few times, then speaks in a low voice.

‘At the end of the day, you did the right thing, Son, you walked away from that stolen car when it came in to the estate. If you’d got into that car, you could be dead like your cousin.’

‘He’s dead?’ Dan squeaks.

Da nods and blinks. Then picks up the Daily Mirror. Dan silently stares at the photo on the back page. Rooney in a football tackle. Rooney’s a fuckin wee dickhead. Not Dan’s cousin. Dan’s an awful bastard for even thinking that about him just only just mastering Ford Fiestas.

Evening time, Kevin’s there again bleary-eyed with their Ma who is grey in the face. She sits on the edge of the bed, squeezes Dan’s hand and fusses with his hair.

‘You look shattered, son’.

That’s cuz I’m shattered, Ma, he thinks. Or maybe he says it out loud because she turns away and looks into her handbag. She’s reeking of fresh smoke. He could eat one now only for the hassle of going outside.

Kevin hovers at the foot of the bed for a while, talking shite dot com. Ma turns to Kevin.

‘Will you stop calling your brother Dan Live Breathe Cars Delaney, you bloody wastral and get us some tea.’

Kevin saunters off. Stops at the nurses’ desk, just outside the double doors. Dan can hear him a mile off. He banters with the student nurse, asks her where she lives. She asks him should he not be in there with his brother, to take his mind off things.

Ma strokes Dan’s hair. She talks about all the people who say hello, who send their love, who cannot make it into the hospital because of one thing and another. Aunty Sinead has a Holy Communion to do the hair-dos for. Her husband wouldn’t walk the length of himself, the lazy fat bastard is in The Beehive. Dan pretends to be asleep, and she eventually shuts up.

When the last swish of visitors fuck away off home the ward quietens to a hushed assortment of night noises. Patients whisper pages in books or settle down with grunts and good night fellas.

Dan’s head fills with the things that people try to take his mind off. Thoughts lurch about like a drunken walk home.

Nine years since the Volvo.

Four years since Ben.

Four years since the alley.

Three weeks off the fags.

Three weeks since he got here.

How many days since a shave?

Radio switched off for the night. The ward has a weird glow in half gloom, the nurse’s lamp angled down on the desk, shining as far as it can stretch on the floor. A night nurse pulls his curtain. Other cubicles wheeze and snore. Dan closes his eyes. All the men’s snores are like cars revving for take off. The ward is as noisy as a Friday night showtime.

Island of Many Voices is fairly galloping along and week 5 on 7 March 2026 promises to be another lively and insightful session with special guest author Lisa McInerney.

Read on for an interview with Lisa in The Stinging Fly, links to a podcast, previews of The Unholy Trinity (Lisa’s three novels), and an essay on working classness.

Lisa’s focus in the week 5 zoom will be her new work-in-progress and editorial work.

Lisa McInerney

Is the author of three novels: The Glorious Heresies, The Blood Miracles and The Rules of Revelation. She has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the RSL Encore Award and the Premio Edoardo Kihlgren for European literature. She is published in 12 languages, is editor of The Stinging Fly magazine, and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Galway.

An interview with Lisa McInerney – The Stinging Fly

The Stinging Fly Podcast: Climate Issue Special

On this month’s episode, host Nicole Flattery is joined by magazine editor Lisa McInerney and former non-fiction editor Róisín Kiberd to discuss putting together the latest issue of The Stinging Fly. Taking the climate emergency as its theme, The Stinging Fly Issue 53 Volume Two presents a variety of responses to the impending climate catastrophe and our responsibility to the current political moment, exploring the ways in which our world is changing and, for better or worse, our role in that change.

The Stinging Fly Podcast invites writers from the latest issue of The Stinging Fly to read and discuss their work. Previous episodes of the podcast ⁠⁠can be found here⁠⁠. The podcast’s theme music is ⁠⁠‘Sale of Lakes’, by Divan⁠⁠.

The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney preview on Google Books

The Blood Miracles by Lisa McInerney preview on Google Books

The Rules of Revelation by Lisa McInerney preview on Google Books

Working Class An Escape Manual by Lisa McInerney. From Common People , Ed by Kit De Waal

Island of Many Voices is a rewarding programme to facilitate, made extra special by the involvement of the 20 awardee writers. Thanks to The Linen Hall (Belfast) and to Dublin UNESCO City of Literature for supporting this writers’ development programme that I curated last year to forge a North of Ireland and Rest of Ireland collaboration.

NUALA O’CONNOR

Nuala O’Connor lives in Galway, Ireland. She is a fiction writer and poet. Her fifth poetry collection Menagerie (Arlen House) was published in 2025. She is currently writing a memoir about late-diagnosed autism. She is a member of Aosdána.

Recommended Listening & Reading

Please check out Nuala’s news section on her webpage for podcasts. Here are two recent ones.

Poetry, Emily Dickinson, and hope

I’m on another podcast this week, this time talking hope, poetry, autism, depression, and Emily Dickinson, with the fab Galway-based poet Kathryn Petruccelli, on her…

Ask the Poet

Nuala O'Connor: rediscovering hope

Nuala O’Connor lives in Galway, Ireland. Her fifth poetry collection Menagerie (Arlen House) was published in 2025. Her novel Miss Emily, about Emily Dickinson’s friendship with an Irish maid, was published in 2015 by Penguin USA and Sandstone in the UK. She’s currently writing a memoir about late-diagnosed autism. She is a mem…

Listen now

7 months ago · 2 likes · 4 comments · Kathryn Petruccelli

New story & interview.

Hear a new story, ‘White Ellen’, that I wrote for The National Library of Ireland podcaster-in-res Zoë Comyns, and an interview with me about the process, for her pod The Reader. The story ‘White Ellen’ is about the Colleen Bawn. Beautifully narrated by Carla C. Emmons.

Recommended reads

All of the novels pictured above! And … basically anything written by Nuala that you can get your hands on. Our library system is a great resource if you don’t have a book budget. Thanks to Dublin City Libraries and Libraries NI, and all libraries on the island.

I’ve included a few information links below, and I would also highly recommend Nuala’s short story collections that you will find details on, in her webpage.

Check out anthologies you might already own, such as The Art of The Glimpse, curated and edited by Sineád Gleeson, where you will find a short story called Squidinky by Nuala, included in the selected 100 Irish short stories.

birdie a collection of sixteen historical flash fictions. Love is the central force in Birdie, a collection of sixteen historical and out-of-time flash fictions that sing with the voices of women loving and losing and learning.

Menagerie a recent poetry collection published by Arlen House. Nuala’s poetry may also be found in The Storms Journal Issue V, an international journal of prose and poetry, and in the Washing Windows series by Arlen House.

For week 3 of IOMV Nuala will read to us from her historical fiction novel NORA, and also a sample of poetry from MENAGERIE. We will discuss the craft and process of different forms with the Island writers.

Thanks to The Linen Hall (Belfast) and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature for making this programme possible, and thanks to Nuala for agreeing to join the panel of special guests.

Thanks to special guest author Cathy Sweeney for her reflection on week 2 of the Island of Many Voices ( IOMV) writer development programme.

Cathy said:

It was an honour to be involved with this project. Thank you to Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and The Linen Hall Belfast for making it happen, and thank you to Fiona O’Rourke for her brilliant facilitation of the session. What a positive experience. Writers from all over Ireland meeting on a rainy Saturday morning to discuss everything from the craft of short story writing to the role of freedom in the creative process. It was a pleasure to be asked such thoughtful questions about my work and I hope that in my sharing my personal experience – of writing with abandon but editing later with a cold eye, of embracing doubt, and of coming (slowly) to accept that there is no ‘right’ way to write – might chime with others.

And, since we had our session on Valentines Day, ❤️ to all!

Island of Many Voices (IOMV) is a writer development programme I curated for Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and The Linen Hall (Belfast). Thanks to the two organisations for making this programme possible, and thanks to Cathy Sweeney for agreeing to join the panel of special guests.

CATHY SWEENEY

Cathy Sweeney has published short fiction and essays in various magazines and journals. In 2020, her collection of short stories, Modern Times, was published by The Stinging Fly Press in Dublin and W&N in the UK and subsequently translated into Italian. Her debut novel, Breakdown, was published by W&N in January 2024 and translated into Dutch and German.

She is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and is represented by Matthew Turner at Rogers, Coleridge & White Agency.

Cathy will read from and discuss her novel Breakdown, and a flash fiction titled The Cheerleader, from Modern Times.

Recommended Reading & Listening

Breakdown: The humane Irish Bestseller about the dark side of modern motherhood - by Cathy Sweeney. Read an excerpt on Google Books.

Read a review of Breakdown in The Guardian.

If you prefer to listen, check out The Women’s Podcast:

To read a piece of Cathy’s shorter fiction, see Anamnesis in The Stinging Fly.

Google Books includes a preview of Cathy’s collection Modern Times in this link.

Thanks to special guest author Anthony J Quinn for his reflection on week 1 of the Island of Many Voices ( IOMV) writer development programme. Also included are Anthony’s writing tips for memoir and crime fiction. These reflections are also available on The Linen Hall (Belfast) and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature’s online platforms.

Anthony said:

Fiona’s questions and those that followed from the writers were invaluable in terms of helping me chart my writing journey from journalism and crime novels to memoir, and I’m very grateful for the insights the discussion generated. Some of those insights I had not fully articulated before, especially the preoccupations that persist across my writing in different genres. I’m thankful for the care and attention of those questions, and how receptive and thoughtful the writers were. They really pushed me to think about why I ended up writing a memoir.

Over nine novels, I’ve been investigating hidden links, unreliable witnesses and the aftershocks of betrayal and violence in the rural communities of the border counties. Memoir requires a similar set of conventions or tools, only applied inwardly, without the protection of fiction. My last novel, Turncoat, in particular, left me at a point where fiction and invention could no longer contain what I was circling – the anxiety felt by an eleven-year-old boy witnessing the violence of the Troubles. In a way, I’d been allowing detectives and informers to carry those questions of silence, betrayal and guilt on my behalf. Crime fiction gave me the confidence that storytelling can bring order to chaos and wring out emotional truths, and that confidence helped me confront the story of my own family and the community I grew up in. The difference was that this time my family and I were in the frame, unreliable witnesses to the past.

I hope these reflections and the discussion itself, prompted so carefully by Fiona and the audience of writers, will be of some use to the participants in negotiating their own creative paths. It’s perfectly fine to circle our memories and experiences for years, even decades, waiting for the time and the genre that will allow us to approach it with courage and honesty. One of the most reassuring things that emerged in our discussion is that no writing is ever wasted. All attempts and detours into different genres are a way of learning the conventions and writing skills we will eventually need when the truth has to be told.

I’m going to finish with a few top writing tips that arose in the discussion, and which I’d like to share again. My top tip to writers tacking memoir is to focus on a concrete object that contains emotional weight, and write from there. In my case, it was the bullet of a gunman given to my family. I wrote about the sensation of it in my hand, what my mother did with it, where it ended up, and how often it and the gunman returned to my thoughts over the years. Let objects do the work, and don’t worry about explaining – trust that meaning and symbolism will accumulate around your chosen object.

My top tip to crime fiction writers is to take a landscape you know intimately and explore what secrets it might be hiding. In my own fiction, I can’t write about a place unless I’ve lived there and learned its moods. Next, imagine a crime that feels as though it could only have happened in that landscape. Setting is the groundwork for fiction and if you write about a place you know well, then that landscape will supply mood, character, tension and even plot. Finally. place a character at the margins of the landscape, emotionally and physically, and consider what boundaries or thresholds they cross as they move through the terrain. Borders of all sorts do a lot of work in my stories – they unsettle characters, make them less predictable, and test their identities. Let the setting act as antagonist and the story will begin to reveal itself.

Island of Many Voices (IOMV) is a writer development programme I curated for Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and The Linen Hall (Belfast). Thanks to the two organisations for making this programme possible, and thanks to Anthony J Quinn for agreeing to join the panel of special guests.

Fiona O’Rourke is a Pushchart Prize nominated author and writer living in Ireland. Her most recent publications are Parnell Squat with Shorter Stories / Underground Dublin (available in a Dublin walking tour), and New Genre in the inaugural Kalpakṣētra / কল্পক্ষেত্র ,

Full writing CV available here and more author/writer information below these recent literature events.

Facilitator for Writing Place Writing Planet (Where Literature Meets Science) with UCD Mary Lavin School of Creative Writing and iCRAG Jan-Mar 2026.

Curator and Facilitator for Island of Many Voices with Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and The Linen Hall, Belfast. February-March 2026.

Authorised but Harmless

Fiona O'Rourke writes fiction, autofiction, and creative nonfiction. She reads at open mics and has performed to an audience of 180 at the Dublin Story Slam. Currently she is querying Bullet Points, an autofiction, and Palestine Street, a novel in stories.

She was guest subeditor and contributor for The Storms Journal Issue IV, and the Organiser MC for Open Mic for Gaza fundraisers during March, April, and September 2024, and throughout 2025, online and in person.

She was invited to contribute to the inaugural Kalpakṣētra / কল্পক্ষেত্র, a bi-lingual journal launched at Kolkata International Book Fair 2026. Her creative nonfiction was selected for the Southword Journal 47. Other recent stories were included in Dublin Underground walking tour, The Belfast Review, Shorter Stories Ireland, Eat The Storms Podcast, Fortnight Magazine, The Storms Journal II, and The Waxed Lemon. She is a Pushcart Prize Nominee for Driving Lessons published in the Storms Journal II.

Other work has been broadcast on RTE Francis MacManus, translated in Troquel Revista de Letras, and published in literary journals including The Lonely Crowd, Sonder, Books Ireland Magazine, The Broken Spiral, The Fish Anthology, and more. She was a finalist in the inaugural Cairde Short Story Award with a story from Palestine Street, judged by Louise Kennedy and Sinéad Gleeson.

Her first published work, Wrong Whiskey, was a prize winner at the Fish International Short Story Award. It was included on a reading list for students at Saint Mary's College, California. Fiona was guest reader and speaker at a seminar on Wrong Whiskey for a module that Saint Mary’s undergrads studied in Ireland. 

Fiona is a first generation university graduate. She moved to Dublin when selected by portfolio (without holding a traditional degree) to study for a Masters in Philosophy in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin. Studying under Professors Deirdre Madden, Gerald Dawe, Paula Meehan, Jonathan Williams, and visiting authors Richard Ford, Siobhán Parkinson, and Julian Gough, she graduated with a distinction in 2015.

Since then, she was selected for the 2016 Irish Novel Fair with Have You Found Luke? The novel was offered a contract by Liberties Press which fell through because Liberties Press did not secure the ACNI funding they had applied for. In 2017 she won a place on the inaugural  XBorders project with the Irish Writers Centre and Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and was awarded an Irish Writers Centre Cill Rialaig writer-in-residence.

Fiona has designed and facilitated creative writing courses and programmes at Trinity College Dublin Innovation Academy, public libraries, festivals, at The Linen Hall Belfast with Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, at iCRAG and UCD Mary Lavin Centre for Creative Writing, at Inchicore College, and at the Irish Writers Centre.

She proposed, curated, facilitated, MC-ed Island of Many Voices, a first-time collaborative writers’ development programme between The Linen Hall Belfast and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature. This ran February to March 2026.

In May and November 2025, she designed and facilitated Creative Responses to the Political Collection for The Linen Hall, Belfast, which will run again in Autumn 2026.

She founded, designed and facilitated Writing the Troubles for the Irish Writers Centre (2022-25). She founded, curated and facilitated the Northern Soul Roadshow 2023-24 featuring a variety of guest authors including Man Booker winning author Anna Burns (Milkman) from Belfast. She ran this programme for the Irish Writers Centre with support from Arts Council Northern Ireland Lottery funding. Northern Soul Roadshow readings and an interview with Fiona are included in an Eat The Storms podcast.

In 2023, she was the facilitator & coordinator of Writing The Earth, an Irish Writers Centre and iCRAG collaboration for writers and scientists, which produced a showcase of new climate-focused writing and plays hosted by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature at Pearse Street Library. Writing The Earth has been developed into Writing Place Writing Planet, and she was invited to be the facilitator of this programme Jan-Mar 2026.

She is a member of the Irish Writers Union and PEN na hÉireann/Irish PEN

A Professional Member and mentor at the Irish Writers Centre.

A member of Women AloudNI 2016-25

A member of Dublin City Arts Office Panel

Stories, Readings, Awards

Full writing CV here.

Parnell Squat forthcoming with Underground Dublin and Shorter Stories Ireland.

Twenty-Seven forthcoming with a Shorter Stories Ireland project.

Troubles Friend forthcoming with a WIP anthology project.

New Genre with the inaugural Kalpakṣētra / কল্পক্ষেত্র bi-lingual journal launched at Kolkata International Book Fair, 2026.

Shopping List with The Storms Journal V

Reliable Family Saloon at Shorter Stories Ireland

Reader Podcast For Palestine with Eat the Storms

Guest subeditor for The Storms Journal IV

This Ain’t No Party in Munster Lit Southword Journal 47

An excerpt from Bullet Points in The Storms Journal IV

Trigger Alert in The Belfast Review

Time Travel Button at Shorter Stories Ireland

First Steps at Dublin Story Slam

Bullet Points sample at Shorter Stories Ireland

Driving Lessons in The Storms Journal

Don’t Wanna Play House in Fortnight Journal

Boyfriends at Shorter Stories Ireland

Highgate 1956 virtualdementiahub.ie

Teamwork Books Ireland and The Waxed Lemon

extraORDINARY Women at Linenhall Library & WomenAloudNI

Party Land S/list Cairde Word Short Story

Euro 2040 The Lonely Crowd

Other People's Photos Sonder II

The Orangeman & the Yellowbelly Shaped By The Sea Anthology

What You Don't Know The Broken Spiral 

What You Don’t Know Spontaneity

IWC/ACNI X Borders

Have You Found Luke? at the Irish Novel Fair

Red translated for Troquel Revista De Letras

Trap4 Thirteen

He’s Going Nowhere RTE Francis MacManus

Wrong Whiskey The Fish Anthology

Poems with Cultivating Voices, Bangor Literary Journal, Wexford Stories

Literature events / programmes / courses

Keep’er Lit Meet the Author, an interview with Rosita Sweetman at the Arthaus Hotel, Dublin 2. Sunday 26 April 2026.

Northern Soul Roadshow Programme 2022 / 2023 / 2024

Northern Soul Roadshow at Eat The Storms podcast

Writing The Earth Programme 2023

Irish Writers Centre Courses

Fingal Libraries The Write Time Festival

Kildare Libraries Connections Through Literature Festival

Women Aloud NI International Women's Day Workshop

Way With Words, Interview with Lucy Sweeney Byrne, IWD

Write By the Sea Festival in Co Wexford

One-to-One Mentoring

Mentor at the Irish Writers Centre since 2018. Fiona has mentored emerging and bursary-awarded writers.

Mentor for a Fingal Arts Office awarded writer 2024-25.

Week 1 reading list, please scroll down.

Island of Many Voices with Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and The Linen Hall (Belfast) is an exciting new initiative aimed at bringing together writers from across the island of Ireland to share their experiences and develop their artistic practice. As its title suggests, this initiative seeks to celebrate and amplify the varied and diverse voices from across the island.

My suggested reading for participant writers for week 1

In week 1 we will focus on Murder Memoir Murder and Turncoat. Anthony will read from Murder Memoir Murder and will discuss the creative process of memoir as well as crime fiction. Although one is a memoir and the other a crime fiction, you will hear from discussion with Anthony that these two books are strongly connected. Check out the linked articles below, and think about questions you will have for the author.

Articles on Murder Memoir Murder, Turncoat, and Northern Ireland Noir:

No Matter How Dark the Tale – Royal Literary Fund

What sort of lunatic are you, Quinn? Are you really going to publish this memoir about the time the IRA held your family at gunpoint?

A metaphysical detective tale Anthony talks about the crafting of Turncoat on writers’ resource writing.ie

Northern Ireland noir_ ‘Bits of the past are still floating around in the darkness’ – The Irish Times

The phone kept ringing with stories of people trying to come to terms with grief – the untold stories of the Troubles.

Praise for Murder Memoir Murder

The result is a breathtakingly brutal piece of crime writing that is relentless in its pursuit of the truth, Declan Burke in the Irish Times

Among many other things, Murder Memoir Murder is a brilliant evocation of Ireland's border culture, its contentions and unwritten protocols, Garrett Carr, author of The Rule of the Land

Hugely evocative, deeply felt and beautifully written, Murder Memoir Murder is a brave, brutal exploration of our shared past, his family’s own personal history and the act of storytelling itself, Brian McGilloway

More about Anthony’s other novels here: BOOKS | anthonyjquinn

Author Biography

Anthony J Quinn’s ten novels have received critical acclaim from The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Financial Times, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Express, Der Spiegel, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sunday Herald, The Irish Times and The Irish Independent.

His debut novel Disappeared (Head of Zeus, 2014) was a Daily Mail crime novel of the year and a Sunday Times best novel of the year. It was also shortlisted by the book critics of the Washington Post, the LA Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle for a Strand Literary Award in the US and longlisted for the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year in the UK. His crime novels have been chosen by The Irish Times and the Irish Independent as one of their best crime novels of the year in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2022.

He has written about crime fiction academically and critically in numerous news articles and has spoken extensively on this subject at events and festivals in Britain, Ireland and Europe.

He has lectured in creative writing at Queen’s University Belfast and has held writer-in-residence posts at Libraries Northern Ireland and in County Cavan. He also teaches creative writing and mentors at the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin, and the Prison Arts Foundation.

I curated this writing community for the two organisations to collaborate on a programme for 20 writers based on the island. The awarded writers are a diverse writing community of ten members based in the North, and ten in the rest of Ireland.

Each week after meeting their special guest, these keyboard comrades will engage in a one hour session to focus on their works-in-progress, generate new writing, hear each other’s work, and polish up a piece to share at a live showcase event in The Linen Hall (Belfast).

Belfast author Wendy Erskine will be the special guest speaker for the showcase.

Read more