‘Before I became a writer, I had already failed quite a lot. I like to think it was good practice.’
Emily Cooper Essay 13th March 2024
The text of our 2023 lecture, which was delivered by short-story writer and novelist, Evelyn Conlon.
Evelyn Conlon Essay 26th January 2024
A chance to look back on our essay series reflecting on the pains and pleasures of writing and publishing – with a new Afterword by Series Editor, Olivia Fitzsimons.
The Stinging Fly Essay 13th December 2023
‘They may not realise it, but the positive impact queer people in progressive countries have on queer people across the world cannot be overstated. For those of us who live in countries where it is dangerous to express our identities, this connection means everything.’
‘When I say I am lonely, my friends tell me, “At least you have your book,” as if the publicity stands in for a partner.’
Sheena Patel Essay 9th November 2023
‘As I write the curse, my daughter turns inside me like a root shifting underground, carving a path through tonnes of soil and rock, cracking the paving stones. I send the curse speeding through the ether to its target. I feel, for the first time in a long time, emptied of hornets.’
Jessica Traynor Essay Issue 48: Summer 2023
‘Thinking about friendship now, I think about the ways in which we are able to do things with others that we could never do on our own. The way that friends drag unknown parts out of our bodies, allowing us to be braver than we can feel by ourselves.’
Thomas Morris Essay 6th September 2023
‘I was not an open-minded person when I first began to publish books. Writers befriended and accepted me with all my fundamentalist baggage. They gave me the time and space to change. They did not judge me.’
Jan Carson Essay 16th August 2023
‘Sometimes I tell myself that the words will come if I just sit here long enough.’
Donal Ryan Essay 2nd August 2023
‘After the book I’ve been working on for three years gets rejected countless times by publishers and agents, I happen upon a bit of spare cash and say, fuck it, I’m getting a shed.’
Kevin Curran Essay 12th July 2023
‘Writing is the only time when the papery thinness of my skin feels like an asset; when curiosity climbs over shame to burn like a guiding beacon; when the right arrangement of words feels like the gentle closing of a door.’
Sheila Armstrong Essay 10th May 2023
‘I don’t want to be looked at but I sing, amplified in a crowded hall. I don’t believe in admitting opinions but I agree to explain myself in essay format… This is the want and the shame of wanting.’
Kevin Doherty Essay 29th March 2023
Contributors: Dizz Tate, Olivia Fitzsimons, Danielle McLaughlin, Jill Crawford, Neil Hegarty, Angelique Tran Van Sang, Anna Walsh, Mia Gallagher, Thomas Morris, Kevin Power, Niamh Campbell, Ian Maleney, John Patrick McHugh, Mary Morrissy, Tadhg Hoey, Susannah Dickey, Sean O'Reilly
The Stinging Fly Criticism Essay 6th January 2023
Contributors: Nicole Flattery, Niamh Mulvey, Najat Abed Alsamad, Gianluca Nativo, Louise Hegarty, Roisín O’Donnell, Lisa Owens, Oisín Fagan, Chetna Maroo, June Caldwell, with an introduction by Editor at Large, Thomas Morris
The Stinging Fly Essay Fiction 2nd January 2023
‘We are many selves, and often these selves have rival needs. Some kind of truce must be established, if the work is to get written.’
Kevin Power Essay 2nd November 2022
‘Waitressing is a career of invention. An old manager of mine once convinced a table that a nail that had fallen into a guest’s grilled fish from a loose shelf in the kitchen was, in fact, just part of a fish hook, leftover from the fisherman’s own line that morning.’
‘Rejection, back when I’d just started sending out stories, felt crushing. It sat upon me like a physical thing, squat and heavy.’
Danielle McLaughlin Essay 28th July 2022
'I got through it, not by talking, or thinking my way out, but by feeling. At one point over that painful weekend, my gut in knots, I realised: if I can feel this, I can get through anything.'
'I received detailed rejections last year from editors who had requested over ten pages of my work. I have rewritten a specific story for a journal on the editor’s advice and it was still not accepted. None of this means I am a failure, or a bad writer.'
'There were times when I loved a book and felt in my bones that I could publish it well, only to bring it to a meeting and find that my colleagues didn’t feel the same.'
‘Writers have an advantage in this process: vulnerable as we are to the judgment of the world, we are also instinctively aware of the strength of an inner place, from which our best work always comes.’
‘I am the person and writer I am because I failed at a previous incarnation of life. Like most actors, I accumulated countless rejections and humiliations, surpassing in number my accomplishments.’
A series of short essays reflecting on the experience of rejection. Contributors: Danielle McLaughlin, Jill Crawford, Neil Hegarty, Angelique Tran Van Sang, Anna Walsh, Mia Gallagher, with an introduction by Thomas Morris.
"It hurts to struggle, to reach for things that you might not yet be able to meet... When will I be enough? All I can do is keep writing, keep meeting my ideas and my words with an openness that I encourage in others and struggle to find in myself."
Olivia Fitzsimons Essay 4th May 2022
Sean O'Reilly on the reissue of Thomas Kinsella's ‘Butcher's Dozen’ to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday: “a timely reminder that the past has to be fought for and poetry is not beyond lending a hand.”
Sean O'Reilly Criticism Essay 25th January 2022
“I had come across the diary of a war criminal and been surprised to find it was also a love story. My idea in rewriting it and the title I chose – ‘First Love’ – was to invert this expectation.”
Philip Ó Ceallaigh Essay 9th December 2021
An essay concerning the experience of crying as a trans masculine person, and the ways in which our gender and character are scrutinised based on our most instinctive, unstoppable expressions.
James Hudson Essay Issue 44/Volume 2: Summer 2021
An essay about Ludwig the cat, and the writer who lives with him.
Camilla Grudova Essay Issue 42, Volume 2: Summer 2020
Cathy Sweeney Essay Issue 44/Volume 2: Summer 2021
Sandra Hoffmann Essay Issue 44/Volume 2: Summer 2021
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