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…
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
Watch Jane Fraser (Guest Fiction Editor of Issue Thirteen) read from the title story of her short story collection, Connective Tissue. You can purchase Issue Thirteen here and Connective Tissue here.
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…
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…
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.…
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch reads her two triolets from Issue Thirteen of The Lonely Crowd.
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. Part Three follows later this week. Livi Michael Manchester Uncanny is the fifth collection of short stories from master craftsman Nicholas Royle. As suggested by the title, all the stories are set in Manchester, although it is a Manchester made…
I look every day at Irish behaviour, listen to Irish talk, and as predictable as it is most of the time, when I examine a lot of it, and I do, it seems so ludicrous to me a lot of the time. Predictable behaviour shouldn’t seem so frequently bizarre, and yet it does, and that was the seed the poem germinated from. The idea of leaving is questioned. The belief that this is freedom is questioned. The idea that the best prisons are the ones we don’t ever know we’re in is there in the poem. I could go on and on here but won’t. It’s in the poems. Have you read them yet?
After reading each story once from beginning to end, I collated a list of sixty ‘maybes’. These were stories that would be read time and time again, though even at the early stages, there were some works that lingered long in the mind. Stories that would not go away. Even now, I have one particular story that rises to the fore, when I think of the whole batch I received. Whether readers would agree, I don’t know. That again, is the nature of this role, and the luxury of subjectivity. At this point, I had to become ruthless in terms of a writer’s control of the form, and also address how the fourteen stories would sit together as an anthology. I had to reject some stories, that although were good and would have otherwise made the cut, were too similar in theme with others that I deemed ‘better’.
‘The Janitor is Crying in the Gents’’ emerged from long hours sitting in hospital waiting rooms and car parks, quietly observing life around me, largely ignoring the stack of dates magazines at my side. There are the amazing staff we see on the TV every day – the nurses and doctors, eyes crinkling into a…
Natalie Ann Holborow reads one of two new poems featured in Issue Thirteen of The Lonely Crowd. Find out how Natalie wrote the poem, here. Natalie Ann Holborow is the author of And Suddenly You Find Yourself and Small (Parthian) and co-author of The Wrong Side of the Looking Glass (Black Rabbit Press). She…
Eleanor Hooker reads from Issue Thirteen of The Lonely Crowd. The Lonely Crowd · Eleanor Hooker reads ‘The Girl With Bees In Her Eye’ Eleanor Hooker’s third poetry collection Of Ochre and Ash (Dedalus Press) and her chapbook Legion (Bonnefant Press, Holland) were published in 2021. A recipient of the Markievicz Award in 2021, her poetry book Where Memory Lies…
Katherine Duffy reads ‘Protocol for a Window Visit’ from Issue Thirteen of The Lonely Crowd, which may be purchased here. Katherine Duffy lives in Ireland. Her poetry pamphlet Talking the Owl Away (Templar Poetry, 2018) received Templar’s Iota Shot Award. Two previous poetry collections were published by The Dedalus Press (Ireland). Her work was…