Issue 14 of The Lonely Crowd is published on February 1st and is available to pre-order here.

Three Poems Medbh McGuckian / Mature People Mary Morrissy / Three Poems Taz Rahman / Everything Falling Emily Devane / Letter To My First Milk Tooth Breda Spaight / Success is counted sweetest… Fiona O’Connor / Naming Jimmy Wilde Tony Curtis / Capital Vices Conor Montague / Two Poems Hilary Watson / Intermission Catherine Wilkinson / Three Poems Linda McKenna / A Suitable Feast Cath Barton / Three Poems Jackie Gorman / A Letter to Dylan Thomas Orfhlaith Foyle / Three Poems Pauline Flynn / Joy Karys Frank / Three Poems Jane Lovell / Wild Horses Lucie McKnight Hardy / Two Poems Jo Mazelis / The Bangle Angela Graham / Two Poems Fiona Cameron / Take Away Alan McCormick / Two Poems Mary O’Donnell / Review: Open Up by Thomas Morris / Edited by John Lavin

Latest articles

New Fiction: ‘Peace, Love & Pushpanna’ by Mary O’Donnell

You expect mansions with lush lawns, strawberries and tennis courts but this is Wimbledon local housing. You and David drag your suitcases along Pilford Road beneath summer-swayed trees, then onto the terrace of Blomfield Gardens. Number 29 has pebble-dashed walls and a door of chipped yellow paint, with voices and loud music pumping out the open windows.

Keep reading

Winter Readings: ‘Wolf in the Ultraviolet’ by Carol Farrelly

Carol Farrelly reads from ‘Wolf in the Ultraviolet’, published in Issue Thirteen of The Lonely Crowd.   Carol Farrelly is a fiction writer, living in Scotland. She is the regional winner (Canada and Europe) of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her stories have been published in journals such as Granta, Irish Times, New Writing Scotland…

Keep reading

Winter Readings: ‘A Conversation with Oma, 1968’ by Emma Venables

Our Winter Readings series continues with an extract from Emma Venables’ brilliant Issue Thirteen short story: ‘A Conversation with Oma, 1968’. Emma Venables is a writer and academic, currently residing in the North-West of England. Her short and flash fiction has been widely published in places such as Mslexia, The Lonely Crowd, Ellipsis Zine, and The Forge Literary Magazine. Her short story, ‘Woman at Gunpoint, 1945’, came runner-up (3rd) in the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize 2020. Her debut novel, Fragments of a Woman, will be published by Aderyn Press in June 2023.  You can follow Emma on Twitter  @EmmaMVenables

Keep reading

Dreams and Realities / Angela Graham

Angela Graham introduces her trio of poems The Magi Remember by reflecting on the link between dreams, imagination and action. In the Christmas Nativity story, the Three Kings, far from being wise men, display astonishing political naivety. They congratulate Herod, the local supremo, on the arrival of a superpower and expect him to be thrilled…

Keep reading

The Magi Remember / Angela Graham

Three poems for the season by Angela Graham: ‘Balthazar’, ‘Melchior’ and ‘Caspar’.   Balthazar      When the roads turned into streets and the streets to lanes and the lanes to alleys I became suspicious. I suspected … … something we had not prepared for.   Our retinue had fallen more and more behind as…

Keep reading

Winter Readings: Raine Geoghegan

Raine Geoghegan reads her two poems from Issue Thirteen . ‘The Man I Thought was Welsh’ ‘My Father’s House’ Raine Geoghegan, M.A. is a Welsh born poet, prose writer and playwright of Romany descent. She is a Forward Prize, twice Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net nominee. Her work has been published online and…

Keep reading

Books of the Year 2022 / Part Four

Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. Jo Mazelis It seems I am always catching up with myself, so the books I read are often lagging behind the times.  For example, in 2022 I finally read The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark  perhaps it was, by then, too late…

Keep reading

Books of the Year 2022 / Part Three

Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. Part Four follows tomorrow. John Lavin In Ruth, the central character in Loved and Missed, Susie Boyt has created a multi-faceted portrait to rival the work of one of her literary heroes, Henry James. If the novel’s early pages are notable…

Keep reading

Winter Readings: ‘Human Soup’ by Madeleine D’Arcy

Madeleine D’Arcy reads from ‘Human Soup’, her short story in Issue Thirteen. Madeleine D’Arcy’s début short story collection, Waiting For The Bullet (Doire Press, 2014), won the Edge Hill Readers’ Choice Prize 2015 (UK). In 2010 she received the Hennessy Literary Award for First Fiction and the overall Hennessy Literary Award for New Irish Writer.…

Keep reading