Newly published + Kindle Special Offer

While I recover from and gather my thoughts - and my photographs - about the Cork Short Story Festival, here are a few new and rather nice things. It's a bit of a bumper month for me in terms of publication (a bumper year, actually  - this makes it 14 pieces published since January):

I have a poem, Moss, in the new issue of Alba, the Journal of Short Poetry. 
My prose poem, Timeless, written in memory of our lovely Cleo is published in .Cent magazine (Page 13), a stunning fashion mag which also has prose.
My short short story, Waving on the Moon, is in the latest issue of A capella Zoo, a fantastic print journal of magical realist and speculative fiction and poetry, it's well worth grabbing a copy!

I also have a few more stories and prose poems forthcoming in the next few weeks, in SPECS, kill author and Electric Velocipede. I'm immensely grateful too all these wonderful publications and encourage you to support them not just by reading what they publish but by also doing them the honour of sending them your work.

Lastly, Salt are doing a very special Kindle promotion right now which means you can purchase my collection for the Kindle for 86p or 99 cents! You can also buy books buy the Best British Short Stories, edited by Nicholas Royle, and books by the wonderful Wena Poon and David Gaffney, Luke Kennard and others... See the Salt blog for the full list. I don't have a Kindle but if I did, I would be overloading that Amazon whispernet thingy with all my downloads....

Okay, back to sorting out Cork festival photographs. In the meantime, read the blogs by Women Rule Writer, Orfhlaith Foyle, Ethel Rohan at Dark Sky Magazine and the official festival blog.

Cork International Short Story Festival Day 1

So, I'm here in Cork, again, at the Cork International Short Story festival (formerly the Frank O'Connor International Short story Festival) and I am just so happy to be here! To be amongst like-minded short story folk, listening to amazing writers read their stories and talk about stories - til Sunday night - is just, for me, sublime.

The festival kicked off with the wondrous Helen Dunmore, here she is. (I forgot to take my proper camera, tomorrow's pics will be better, I promise!)

She read a story from her collection Ice Cream,  called The Polish Teacher's Tie, which I had only read a few weeks ago. It was lovely hearing her read it. Just lovely. And she talked about what it was like to win prizes... and not to win prizes! We had a very nice chat afterwards - she is dashing back to Bristol tomorrow, which is a shame, but  - SPOILER ALERT - she is going to be the guest on the Arvon Foundation short story course I am co-tutoring with Adam Marek in Nov 2012, so I just wanted to introduce myself, say hi. I tried not to gush too much! She and I expressed our dismay at the BBC Afternoon Reading cuts  (check out Wrath of God's latest blog post for more on that).

I was thrilled to finally meet my online friend and fabulous writer Ethel Rohan, who is reading at the festival on Friday - originally Irish, she now lives in San Francisco. We have published each other - I chose one of her stories when I edited Southword and she asked me to contribute when she was guest editor at Necessary Fiction, so it is just great to finally meet her and once again have that wonderful experience when an online acquaintance is just as great - if not more so - in person!

And then... the final readings of the evening, by Orfhlaith Foyle and Peter Murphy, Irish writers who knocked me - and the rest of the audience, I think - sideways with their astonishing prose. I felt flattened, in the best way, by their dark and powerful stories. Just astonishing. Seek them out! (You can read an interview with Orfhlaith on Nuala Ní Chonchúir''s blog here.)

Then we, as tradition dictates, retired to the local tapas bar to unwind. I am still wound though! Too much stimulation. Okay, must muster my strength for tomorrow. Check out the Cork International Short Story festival website to see what's in store...