Irish short-story writer standing out from the crowd

With an acclaimed new Irish short-story writer cropping up seemingly every other day, it can be difficult to stand out.

But with subjects ranging from a paedophile acquiring a sex-therapy robot and wondering how they’ll get along, to graphic, kinky, and submissive sex, to an unborn child narrating her own tale, it’s fair to say that June Caldwell, in her debut collection Room Little Darker, isn’t like most other short-story writers.

A former journalist based in Dublin, Caldwell completed an MA in creative writing at Queen’s University in Belfast and has won the Moth International Short Story Prize.