Short story festival highlights

HIGHLIGHT of the Cork International Short Story Festival (Sept 18-22) will be a reading by, and public interview with David Constantine, winner of the 2013 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award at Triskel Christchurch on Sept 22.

Cathy Galvin will conduct the interview and Constantine will read from his winning collection, Tea at the Midland and Other Stories.

The €25,000 prize, part-funded by UCC, is the most lucrative in the world for a collection of short stories. On the opening night of the festival, Donal Ryan, longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize for his debut novel, The Spinning Heart will be in conversation with Patrick Cotter at Triskel Christchurch.

The novel is told from the viewpoints of 21 people struggling after Ireland’s financial collapse. Ryan’s second novel, published this autumn, is called The Thing About December.

With the spotlight on fresh talent, ‘From 30 under 30: A Selection of Emerging Young Munster Writers’ will be presented at Grand Parade City Library on Sept 18. Described by novelist Belinda McKeon, as ‘wry and vivid, knowing and unafraid,’ it includes writing by Noel O’Regan, James O’Sullivan, Cal Doyle and Louise Hegarty.

Also at the library on Sept 18, a new collection of short stories by Cork writer, Billy O’Callaghan, will be launched. Entitled The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind, this is his third collection of published stories.

One of the leading voices in Israeli literature and cinema, Etgar Keret, will be in conversation with poet, Matthew Sweeney, on Sept 18 at Triskel Christchurch, along with Adam Marek. Keret, twice shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, has been described by the Guardian as “a great short story writer whose work is all the greater because it’s funny.”

Two Galway-based writers, Aileen Armstrong and Alan McMonagle, will be in conversation with writer, Madeleine D’Arcy at the Grand Parade City Library on Sept 19. Armstrong’s debut collection of short stories, ‘End of Days’ has just been published by Doire Press. McMonagle’s second collection of short stories, ‘Psychotic Stories’ was published by Arlen Press this year.

Julian Gough and Patrick McCabe will be in conversation with Kevin Barry at Triskel Christchurch on Sept 21. Gough’s novella Crash! was a recent Kindle Single hit. McCabe’s latest book, published this month, is Goodbye Mr Fish/Hello Mr Rat.

Deborah Levy and Michele Roberts will be in conversation with Cathy Galvin at Triskel Christchurch on Sept 19.

Levy’s collection, Black Vodka was shortlisted for this year’s Frank O’Connor’s International Short Story Award. Her most recent novel, Swimming Home was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Roberts’s most recent collection of short stories is Mud – Stories of Sex and Love.

Angela Bourke and Micheál Ó Conghaile will be in conversation with Doireann Ní Ghríofa at the Grand Parade City Library on Sept 20. Bourke writes in English and Irish and taught at UCD until recently. Her work includes The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story and Maeve Brennan: Homesick at the New Yorker.

She has published a small number of short stories in Irish. Ó Conghaile has written poetry, short stories, a novel, plays, a novella and translations and among the awards he has won is the Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year Award.

The presentation of the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize and the 10th anniversary anthology launch takes place at Millennium Hall, City Hall, on Sept 20.

This year’s winner of the award is Illinois-based Molia Dumbleton for her story, The Way We Carried Ourselves.

*For full programme details, go to www.corkshortstory.net.