Rachael Smart: Firstly, congratulations on Love Stories for Hectic People, a collection which excavates love in all of its forms. It is tender and wounding, erotic and transporting, it takes both regular and extraordinary moments in love and offers up brief narratives that are oblique and always unflinching. Your former collections, Pelt and The Cartography…
Truth and Fiction in Story-Telling When I was a young, confused graphic design student, in the long-ago days of collage and drawing boards, I remember train rides across Sydney to art college. I remember the obsessions of a late, damaged teenagehood involving the death of a child, years of classical piano, Tchaikovsky LPs, warped discotheques…
Lauren Mackenzie discusses ‘Free Love’, her short story in Issue Twelve. You can listen to Lauren read the story here. ‘Free Love’ is one story from an interconnected collection called That Sky That Sky which I am currently writing about a family set in Australia and Ireland over the last fifty years. The idea for…
Elizabeth Baines reads an extract from her short story, ‘The Words He Said’, published in Issue Twelve. See the site tomorrow for Elizabeth’s short essay on the composition of the story. Listen to Elizabeth read an extract from the story here. ‘The Words He Said’ is a story about the years-long consequences of a single…
Elizabeth Baines reads an extract from her short story, ‘The Words He Said’, published in Issue Twelve. See the site tomorrow for Elizabeth’s short essay on the composition of the story. The Lonely Crowd · Winter Readings ‘The Words He Said’ by Elizabeth Baines Image by Jo Mazelis.
Lauren Mackenzie reads Free Love from Issue Twelve of The Lonely Crowd. The Lonely Crowd · Winter Readings: ‘Free Love’ by Lauren Mackenzie Image by Jo Mazelis.
Richard Smyth discusses his new short story in Issue Twelve. I’ve never been to Greenland. I spent a week in Inverness when I was ten (1458 miles away), which I think is the closest to Greenland I’ve been, unless you contend that the fractionally closer cultural connections of Stockholm, where I took a city-break in…
Laura Morris reads an excerpt from ‘Foot and Mouth’, her short story in Issue Twelve of The Lonely Crowd. The Lonely Crowd · Winter Readings: 'Foot and Mouth' by Laura Morris Laura Morris’s fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and featured in the Honno anthologies Safe World Gone and All Shall Be Well. She’s…
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…
Jonathan Gibbs discusses his short story in Issue 12. You can listen to Jonathan read the opening of the story here. ‘A Prolonged Kiss’ has since been shortlisted for the prestigious Sunday Times / Audible Short Story of the Year Award. ‘A Prolonged Kiss’ is a story that was a long time coming. It grew…
Jonathan Gibbs reads an extract from ‘A Prolonged Kiss’, featured in Issue Twelve of The Lonely Crowd. The Lonely Crowd · ‘A Prolonged Kiss’ By Jonathan Gibbs Jonathan Gibbs is the author of ‘Randall’ (Galley Beggar Press) and ‘The Large Door’ (Boiler House). His short stories have been anthologised in Best British Short Stories…
Fergus Cronin reads the opening of ‘Badlands’ from Issue Twelve. The Lonely Crowd · Winter Readings: ‘Badlands’ by Fergus Cronin Read Fergus Cronin on ‘Badlands’ here. Fergus Cronin is a native of Dublin. He has had a variety of occupations ranging from water engineering to theatre. In 2004 he moved to north Connemara in Galway. …
‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’ is the oft-quoted opening line of L P Hartley’s novel The Go-Between. Before checking the quote I wrote it as ‘The past is another country’ and then found that I am far from being the first to make that mistake. Our memories are unreliable and apt to deceive us; indeed, they are remade every time we call them to mind, so multiplying the possibilities of distortion. In ‘Goosey’ I explore ways in which the past can hold us hostage and the means by which we can escape its tyranny. As befits the form of the short story, the dramas faced by my central character, Rodney, are small in scale, but none the less real or challenging: his mother has died and he has to sort through her affairs, including photographs of his life in the theatre, which evoke for him other loves and losses. ‘Goosey’ is the story of how he copes and finds ways to carry
Fergus Cronin discusses his short story ‘Badlands’, featured in Issue Twelve of The Lonely Crowd. It’s a dangerous time. Truth is shy. Hate slakes fear. Fixes are scarce. But poetry and fiction can do their thing: use their own ‘lies’ thoughtfully; untwist some of the awfulness; reclaim the meaning of words; mean to be…