The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout 2026. For March, we are delighted to publish a new piece by David Frankel. It looked like an old tool box, handmade from planks, screwed together at the corners. A cloth cover, stiff with grime, failed to contain the…
The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout 2026. For February, we are delighted to publish a new piece by Glyn Edwards. There was once a boy who became a man of sorts, and in those intervening years he shed all his wonder for the wild. When…
The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout 2026. For January, we are delighted to publish a new piece by P. C. Evans. The Attic Over the Weigh House Then one day, over coffee, Nicky said, ‘Why don’t we go out for dinner after work one…
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd choose the books they have most enjoyed this year. John Lavin Twenty years in the making, Sarah Hall’s seventh novel, Helm, is an imaginative tour de force. The Eden Valley, where the author grew up, is dominated by the shrieking Helm (the only named wind in Britain) and Hall…
The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout 2025. For December, we are delighted to publish a new story by Jane Fraser. It wasn’t a white Christmas in Gower as they’d promised on Wales Today. Lynne and David looked out over the ocean – frothy-white and agitated…
For some time before I wrote ‘Joy’, I’d been having strange feelings. I didn’t know what to make of them, or how to explain them. They occurred in bouts a few times a year. They were blasts of intense, untethered happiness, often ambushing me in very mundane settings. Ironically, they made me feel a little lonely afterwards, as I couldn’t think of anyone I could talk to about them who wouldn’t find me loopy. So, I kept quiet. Eventually, I confided in my husband, who listened, and told me he didn’t experience such things. I expect he thought I was loopy.
Eric was late to the airport, but Laura was not there yet with her life. The pieces of it would not come together. She was studying, she was being evicted, she worried her boyfriend was cheating on her. Someone had stolen her identity and was buying blenders from abroad in her name and she had spent a lot of time sorting it out.
The police told her the blenders were likely bought for mixing drugs. How could people do that to their bodies? Laura was training to be a nutritionist.
We are open for submissions until November 30th, 2025. Short stories can be anywhere between 500 and 5000 words in length. Please send no more than four poems. Please send in word docs rather than in PDF. These submissions will be considered for our online Story of the Month series, our online Poet of the…
The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout the remainder of 2025. For October, we are delighted to publish a new piece by Megan Neary. Michael left his apartment and walked to the spot along the curb where he had parked his car. It was gone. ‘Fuck,…
The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout the remainder of 2025. For September, we are delighted to publish a new piece by Penny Simpson.
Blood pooled in the palm of her outstretched hand and a single red tear rolled down her wrist. Truth be known, it turned his stomach. She had been crying and her knickers were on the bathroom floor.
The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout the remainder of 2025. For July, we are delighted to publish a new work by Tadgh Muller. And the dog started barking, charging around like she might rip down a curtain or knock over the table. My missus went…
The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout the remainder of 2025. For June, we are delighted to publish a new work by Aideen Henry.
‘Mature People’ comes from my recently published collection of short stories, Twenty-Twenty Vision. It could well have been the title of the entire collection since the overarching theme is the experience of late middle-age reckoning; the backward glance on life, love and the whole damned thing.
Some of the action of ‘Mature People’ takes place in Trinity College Dublin – so there’s also a sly echo of Sally Rooney’s Normal People in the title. However, this is Normal People for oldies.