The Stinging Fly

The Stinging Fly and Opium magazine (Brooklyn, NY) are happy to present one great big night out at the Sugar Club next Friday March 5th…

7.30 - 8.30

Launch of the Spring 2010 issue of The Stinging Fly

9 pm until late:

Opium Magazine presents its first ever Dublin Literary Death Match…

The Literary Death Match

Colm Liddy and Nuala Ní Chonchúir (both featured in Issue 15) will battle it out with Brian O’Connell and Marty Mulligan in Opium magazine’s Literary Death Match, a marriage of “the literary and performative aspects of Def Poetry Jam, rapier-witted quips of American Idol’s judging (without any meanness), and the ridiculousness and hilarity of Double Dare…”

DOORS OPEN AT 7.30 PM

TICKETS: €9 at the door (€6 with a valid student ID)

BOOK AHEAD to ensure your place and to get tickets at discounted rate… We look forward to seeing you there!

Alison Walsh’s feature on The Stinging Fly appeared in The Sunday Independent this week. Read it here.

Good(ish) news from the Arts Council last week in that we have received €50,000 in funding for 2010. This represents a cut of just over 8% from last year, which in these very difficult times is not bad at all.

In offering this funding, the Arts Council wrote:

The Arts Council acknowledges that The Stinging Fly remains a vital and unique part of the Irish literary environment and its commitment to the writer, to writing and to the audience is evident in every strand of its work. The magazine and the press both produce work of quality which is innovative, fresh and interesting, and the editorial standards of all work is high. The Arts Council wishes to both applaud and encourage The Stinging Fly’s developmental approach to its work, particularly in the current environment. Funding has been offered at a level which the Council feels will still enable The Stinging Fly to serve the needs of writers and audiences, a service it has expertly provided for the past number of years.

And just two weeks after Kevin Barry made his New Yorker debut, now it’s Claire Keegan’s turn. A somewhat shorter version of her Davy Byrnes Award-winning story ‘Foster’ is in the February 15th edition. Read it here.

Finally, there’s a review of Davy Byrnes Stories in the current issue of The Short Review.

Some very good news this week as Kevin Barry makes his New Yorker debut with a new short story, ‘Fjord of Killary’. The story appears in the February 1st edition and can be read online here:

Well done to Kevin. Now that he’s made it there, he can make it anywhere…

And there is more good news… Kevin’s first novel, City of Bohane, will be published next year by Jonathan Cape.

And more… A production of his own adaptation of the stories from his debut collection, There Are Little Kingdoms, is being staged in Washington D.C. at the Keegan Theatre in March this year.

There Are Little Kingdoms was first published in 2007 and was named a book of the year by The Irish Times, The Sunday Tribune and Metro. It also earned Kevin the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature that year.

to one and all…

As is our wont, we are now accepting submissions up until the end of March. Guidelines here:

http://www.stingingfly.org/submissions.html

The launch of Davy Byrnes Stories takes place next Wednesday evening (Nov 25th) in the Irish Writers’ Centre, 19 Parnell Square, at 7p.m. All are welcome.
Copies of the book will be going out to bookshops early next week and can also be ordered online from us.

We’re also offering it as part of this year’s Christmas Offer.

And for our last event of the year, we’re organising a second Fly By Night extravaganza. Join us on December 9th in the Odessa Club for readings, music and more. We’ll be there 8pm until late. Admission is €10, tickets will be on the door.

The Winter 2009-10 issue is out now. Lots of good stuff packed inside.

And we’ve just sent our latest book to the printers. Davy Byrnes Stories features the six stories short-listed for the 2009 Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award. It will be out by the end of the month. More anon…

We’re delighted to have had Life In The Universe by Michael J. Farrell selected as one of thirty titles which will feature in the first ever Great Irish Book Week promotion.

Great Irish Book Week is an initiative of Publishing Ireland and is aimed at boosting the book publishing and book selling sectors. The hope is that this campaign will highlight the fantastic range of books on offer from Irish book publishers.

Great Irish Book Week will run from Saturday October 24th to Saturday October 31st. Find out more here.

Novel Writing Workshop with Sean O’Reilly

We are looking for writers in the early stages of a novel who feel they will benefit from a relationship with a group of others engaged in the same process. The group (of no more than ten writers) under the direction of acclaimed novelist and short story writer Sean O’Reilly will meet once a week in a workshop setting over a six-month period. This will require a serious long-term commitment from all participants.

At each evening workshop, two participating writers will present their work in progress to the rest of the group for close scrutiny. Everyone will have read and thought deeply about the work beforehand.

Note that there will be no attempt to impose a rationalised schema of creative writing exercises. The writing up for discussion each week is the raw material; any questions of novelistic technique or prose style will arise naturally from the work itself. If you are writing a novel, then you will have ten close readers to respond to every stage of its development. The group will also be reading and analysing a number of “first” novels by contemporary writers.

Over the course of the six months, each writer can look forward to having their work on the table on at least four occasions. In this way, the group will witness and contribute to the development of all the novels in progress. The ultimate aim is for each participant to complete (yes!) a strong first draft of his/her novel. 

Alongside the workshops, on one Saturday every month, there will be a series of specialist talks on issues around the process of writing and the imagination.

The group discussions will be led and overseen by the writer Sean O’Reilly. His published work includes: Curfew and Other Stories, the novels Love and Sleep and The Swing of Things, and Watermark (with The Stinging Fly Press.)  O’Reilly has a wealth of experience facilitating fiction workshops, as Writer-in-Residence with Fingal County Council, Dublin City Council and IADT/Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council amongst others.

To apply:

Post 20-30 pages of your work in progress to:
The Stinging Fly, PO Box 6016, Dublin 8 by Friday, September 4^th 2009.

Include a short cover letter that includes any publication history and full contact details. (For information purposes only: places on the workshop will be offered on the basis of the work in progress submitted.)

Submissions must be typed in font size 12 with double-line spacing.

Manuscripts will not be returned. E-mail submissions will not be accepted.

Cost of workshop: €1500 (to be paid once a place on the workshop has been offered. A schedule of payment by installment can be drawn up and agreed with individual partcipants where necessary.)

Starts: Monday October 12th

Times:  Twenty weekly workshops on Monday evenings from 6.00pm – 9.30pm 
(Tues eve where Monday is a Bank Holiday)

Plus five Saturday sessions (dates TBC) 10.00am – 4.00pm

Venue: The Irish Writers’ Centre, 19 Parnell Square, Dublin 1

The Stinging Fly Summer Readings Series
@ the Irish Writers’ Centre: Three Thursdays in July

Doors at 7 p.m.

Admission €5 (which can be used towards the purchase of any Stinging Fly publication)

Irish Writers’ Centre is at 19 Parnell Square, Dublin 1.

9 July:

Launch of Issue 13, the Summer 2009 issue
Readers will include Phillip Cummings, Martin Dyar, Catherine Finn, Máighréad Medbh and Geraldine Mitchell.

Musical guests: The Good Time Maritimes

16 July:

Readings by Featured Poet Richard W. Halperin (Summer ’09), Alison MacLeod, Adam Marek and 2008 Stinging Fly Prize winner Orlaith O’Sullivan.

Musical guest: Monica Harkin

23 July:

Reading by Michael J. Farrell, author of the new short story collection, Life in the Universe (Stinging Fly Press, 2009) and the six winners of The Stinging Fly New Work Showcase.

Musical guest: Larry Beau