Justine Bothwick reads ‘Tenderness’ from Issue 12 of The Lonely Crowd. Justine Bothwick grew up in Kent and Hampshire, and studied in London. She is a graduate of the Manchester Writing School’s Creative Writing MA programme and has short stories published in Fictive Dream, Virtual Zine, Confingo Magazine, and forthcoming with Nightjar Press. Her work…
Contributors old and new to The Lonely Crowd choose the books that they have most enjoyed reading in 2020. Given the nature of the year, not all of these titles were published in 2020. David Hayden Here are some of the books I read, and reread, this year, which made a difference to me. African…
Contributors old and new to The Lonely Crowd choose the books that they have most enjoyed reading in 2020. Given the nature of the year, not all of these titles were published in 2020. Hisham Bustani Inua Ellams, The Actual It is surprising how much writing in general, and poetry in particular, have succumbed to…
Jaki McCarrick reads ‘Blackbird’ from Issue Eleven of The Lonely Crowd. Jaki McCarrick is an award-winning writer of plays, poetry and fiction. Her play LEOPOLDVILLE won the 2010 Papatango Prize for New Writing, and her most recent play, THE NATURALISTS, premiered in New York to rave reviews: “Best Bet” International Theatre, Theatre is Easy; “Impeccable,…
Contributors old and new to The Lonely Crowd choose the books that they have most enjoyed reading in 2020. Given the nature of the year, not all of these titles were published in 2020. Marc Hamer One of the books I have read this years that has stayed with me is Teaching a Stone to…
Contributors old and new to The Lonely Crowd choose the books that they have most enjoyed reading in 2020. Given the nature of the year, not all of these titles were published in 2020. Mary Morrissy History dominated my reading this year, perhaps because the present was so insupportable. Plague crept in, regardless, particularly in…
‘Tin’ is a commissioned story and, therefore, I approached and wrote it differently to the stories that occur to me in a natural way. Firstly, the story had to be designed to be read aloud. BBC Radio Ulster and 14-18 NOW – the UK’s arts programme for the First World War centenary – asked a…
Down the years there has always been an ease between Patricia and Malachy that’s hard for others to slip between. It’s as if they have an invisible rope that binds them and no one can get beyond it, not even me. Their attachment didn’t bother me overly much before, but I’m the woman of the house now and I won’t have Patricia sharing soft looks with my husband. Mrs Cahill from down the way – who has watched out for us since Mammy passed – told me I need to announce myself. So I rise now and step away from the table; I place Patricia’s old cushion onto the settle by the wall and I sit into Mammy’s chair by the fire.
Mary Morrissy discusses ‘Repossession’, her new short story in Issue Twelve of The Lonely Crowd. Getting the right title for a story is important and there’s usually an ‘aha’ moment when you find it, or it finds you. With ‘Repossession’ this moment never came, so as far as I’m concerned, it is still a…
Dan Tyte reads a Christmas short story as part of our Winter Readings series of podcasts. Millennial identical twins Gerard and Stephanie are back home for Christmas Day. Expect family politics with all the trimmings. The stand-alone story also acts as the first chapter of Tyte’s latest novel, The Offline Project (The Big Issue called…
Our Winter Readings podcast series returns with regular Lonely Crowd contributor, Susanna Crossman, reading her short story ‘Making Thrums’, taken from Issue 11. Photography: copyright Jo Mazelis, 2019.
Our Winter Readings podcast series returns with regular Lonely Crowd contributor, Jo Mazelis, reading her short story ‘Greyhound Nights’, taken from Issue 12. Painting by Jo Mazelis.
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd pick the best books that they have read this year. Jaki McCarrick My reading in 2019 was disparate and strange. At night I mostly read fiction, some novels I had already read or missed classics or works published a few years previously. During the day, I read books I’d been asked to review, much…
Contributors to The Lonely Crowd pick the best books that they have read this year. Lisa Harding When I was gifted the much-hyped bestseller Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, I was sceptical. The grandiose claims that this a ‘once-in-a generation book’, that it is a ‘masterpiece’,’ astonishing’, ‘compelling’, an ‘instant classic’ made me weary and wary, and yes, prone…