Our Guest Non-Fiction Editor Catherine Wilkinson reads her short story, ‘Grey Wizard’, originally published in Issue Ten. The Lonely Crowd · Winter Readings: ‘Grey Wizard’ by Catherine Wilkinson Catherine Wilkinson was first published in Issue 11 of this publication with her story GREY WIZARD. Introduced as ‘an exquisite painterly story concerning the death of a…
Issue Ten of The Lonely Crowd features two new poems by Kevin Cahill. I was dying. The four walls were closing in. At thirteen it was already easier to see the end of the world, than the end of school; the end of my life than the end of the grammar books. The kinks in…
Photos from the Cardiff launch of Issue Ten of The Lonely Crowd. All photos by Michou Burckett St. Laurent The Lonely Crowd in Cardiff were… Jane Fraser lives and works in Llangennith, Gower. She has an MA and PhD in Creative Writing from Swansea University. In 2017 she was a finalist in the Manchester Fiction…
My most recent experience at that time is sleep, and the wild irrationality and emotional defencelessness of dreams. This is when my imagination is most vivid and my intelligence sharpest. That part of writing is almost invariable and I’m happy about it. I’m not so happy at all with how often I manage to make time to sift, type out, revise, sift again, arrange, and share. Life always seems to get in the way of those parts of the process.
I’ve known Susmita Bhattacharya for a couple of years now, and 2018 was particularly special as we both hadshort story collections published by Daliha Publishing (Subjunctive Moods for me and Table Manners for Susmita). I’m delighted to interview her and find out more about her experience of writing and publishing these pieces. Table Manners contains a number of prizewinning stories and is a…
John Freeman is a prize-winning poet and critic whose work has appeared in magazines and anthologies over several decades. His most recent books are What Possessed Me (Worple Press), and Strata Smith and the Anthropocene (Knives Forks and Spoons Press), both published in 2016. Earlier collections include A Suite for Summer (Worple), White Wings: New and Selected Prose Poems (Contraband Books), Landscape with Portraits (Redbeck…
Sophie Van Llewyn discusses her short story, ‘Dinner for Two’, taken from Issue Ten of The Lonely Crowd. At the time when I began writing ‘Dinner for Two,’ in the winter of 2017, I was, primarily, a flash fiction writer. I had a six-month-old baby, and I only had time to write when she was napping.…
Ellie Rees discusses her two poems in Issue Ten of The Lonely Crowd. What happens to a poem when you take it out of its context, when it loses the support of the poems that lead up to it, and the reflective glow of those that come after? In The Natural History of Selborne, first…
Paul Whyte discusses his short story, ‘Bottle Gardens’, featured in Issue Ten of The Lonely Crowd. I’ve lived with a relatively severe anxiety disorder for most of my life. It’s a part of who I am, and that’s ok, over the years I’ve come to accept it. Thankfully, I seem to be managing it pretty well…
Meadhbh Ní Eadhra reads an excerpt from ‘Messages’, her short story in Issue Ten. The Lonely Crowd · An Excerpt from ‘Messages’ by Meadhbh Ní Eadhra Meadhbh Ní Eadhra is from Galway in the West of Ireland. She writes in Irish and English and has published three award-winning novels for young people, Rua, Fáinne Fí Fífí and Faye. She won the Moth…
When the editor, John Lavin, asked me to contribute a few words online to supplement poems of mine published in Issues 7 and 10 of The Lonely Crowd, two of which that are part of a long-term and on-going series, ‘tales sad, savidj and obscure’, I agreed to do so with mixed feelings, as I…
K. S. Moore discusses her three poems from Issue Ten of The Lonely Crowd. For me, going outdoors is often the start of an adventure in poetry. It’s that feeling of being in nature. Everyone and everything is highlighted against a background of animated, unspoiled colours. ‘Lost Summer’ began when I saw a neglected boat,…
Patrick Jones reads ‘Soul Transplant’ from Issue Ten. Patrick Jones’ published work includes The Guerilla Tapestry (1995), The Protest Of Discipline (1996), Detritus (1997), Mute Communion (1997), Commemoration and Amnesia (Big Noise Productions, 1999), Fuse (Parthian Books, 2001), Against (2003), Darkness is where the stars are (Cinnamon Press, 2008), Tongues for a Stammering Time (Anhrefn Records, 2009), The Aspirations of Poverty (Red poets, 2017). © Patrick Jones, 2018. Image © Jo Mazelis, 2018.
In order to consider the germination of my story I’d like to refer to Dan Coxon’s online piece on this site On Writing ‘Sound of the Riverbed’, in which he assesses the worth of the adage, ‘Write what you know’. He concludes: Perhaps I was wrong to reject Mark Twain’s ‘Write what you know’. Perhaps…