Aiden O Reilly
  • Notes on what I’m reading
  • News
    • News
    • For the record
      • Kudos to The Missouri Review
  • Debut Book
    • Events, readings, etc.
  • Publications
    • Publications
    • Awards
    • About me

Essays & stuff I don't want to forget

RSS FeedFacebook

Writers’ Workbench course with Keegan & myself

Posted by
Tweet

Colm Keegan & myself are teaming up to give a 6-week course in creative writing. Enhance your creative/critiquing skillset and knock your writing into shape.
writersworkbenchdublin@gmail.com

Workbench

Six-week course, Wednesday 7pm-9pm. Starting Feb 6th. This course takes a hands-on approach covering:
Creativity,
Finding your voice,
Style,
Structure/plot,
Pace,
Dialogue,
Punctuation,
Editing

Schematically Keegan will cover the ‘Creative’ aspects and O’Reilly the ‘Critiquing’ – but the main reason for two instructors is for variety. Held at Block T creative hub, just a minute walk from Fatima Luas stop. Or 5 minutes up from James Hospital / 10 mins from Heuston station.
Contact: writersworkbenchdublin@gmail.com
It starts Wednesday Feb 6th at:
Block T artistic social enterprise
8 Basin View
Dublin 8
Limited places €130

CONTINUE READING >
0 comments

Stinging Fly Stories

Posted by
Tweet

Stinging Fly Stories

I’ve had no less than four stories in The Stinging Fly over the years. Big thanks to Declan Meade for being a thoughtful editor and for bringing readers so many interesting new stories over the years.
So now I’m delighted to have a story in this anthology to celebrate 20 years of The Stinging Fly.

The ‘stinging fly’ of the title is an allusion to a passage in Socrates’ defence speech in court where he was charged with impiety.

” I was attached to this city by the god — though it seems a ridiculous thing to say — as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company.”

CONTINUE READING >
0 comments

My story in Litro magazine

Posted by
Tweet

My story Contract was chosen for #StorySunday in London’s fantastic Litro magazine in Dec 2016.

Click the link here to go to the story. (I love old-skool internet days.)

Contract

…. Clives tries desperately to fit in with the caring & whimsical atmosphere of his new office job

Fiction at Litro magazine

CONTINUE READING >
0 comments

London Trip

Posted by
Tweet

August kicked off with a mini-reading-tour of London with Mike McCormack. A huge thanks to Anthony Cartwright for instigating the idea, and for interviewing us both nights.

Mike & I read from our respective books Solar Bones and Greetings, Hero. Anthony himself has a new novel Iron Towns … “Once the furnace heart of industrial England, now the valley is home only to fading dreams.”

So August 2nd we met up at fabled Bookseller Crow-on-the-Hill in Crystal Palace. “Twee, kowtowing, conventional it ain’t,” it says on their website. More than a bookshop, Crow-on-the-Hill is an independent force on the books scene – they even hold writing classes there. Big thanks to Jonathan and staff there.

Crow on the Hill with Mike McCormack and Anthony Cartwright Anthony Cartwright on the left. None of us gave much thought to photographs, so this is the only shot from Crow … and unfortunately only Mike’s knee is in it.

Next night the three of us descended on the Quaker Bookshop, Friends House, Euston road. Different crowd, different atmosphere, different conversation. McCormack sparked an animated discussion about the underappreciated role of engineers in shaping the world. There were also some words about the largely-forgotten tradition of Irish gothic fiction.

Quaker Bookshop with Mike McCormack and Anthony CartwrightMike McCormack reading at the Quaker bookshop.

Quaker Bookshop with Mike McCormack and Anthony CartwrightMyself reading.

And the day after that, I headed up to Norwich for a pre-launch event of The End at UEA’s Enterprise centre. Fifteen stories inspired or sparked off by fifteen of Nicolas Ruston’s scratch paintings. This is The End my friends. And it comes with a black wax seal.Unthank Books Nicolas Ruston The End

Brought out by Unthank Books who are a powerhouse of extraordinary fiction and bring out a semi-annual state-of-the-art of UK short fiction. They call it the Unthology series, and Unthology 8 came out recently.

CONTINUE READING >
0 comments

London Tour

Posted by
Tweet

AidenMIKE-500x285Mike McCormack and myself are teaming up for a mini-tour of London, with two dates signed up at bookshops.
I’m immensely grateful to Anthony Cartwright for playing a key role in instigating the readings. His own fourth novel, Iron Towns, came out in May.

Anthony will be discussing the books with us on the nights:

  • Tues August 2nd 7:30 pm at Bookseller Crow on the Hill, Crystal Palace
  • Wed August 3rd 7:00pm at The Quaker Bookshop, Friends House,, Euston Road 173-177

Mike McCormack is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from Mayo. His previous work includes Getting it in the Head (1995), Notes from a Coma (2005), which was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award, and Forensic Songs (2012). In 1996 he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and in 2007 he was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship.
His latest novel Solar Bones came out recently.

Anthony Cartwright has worked in factories, meatpacking plants, pubs and warehouses and with London Underground. His debut novel, The Afterglow won much acclaim – and a Betty Trask Award in 2004. His second novel, Heartland, was published by Tindal Street in May 2009 and praised by Jonathan Coe, David Peace, Catherine O’Flynn and DJ Taylor amongst many others. It was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and was a Book at Bedtime on BBC Radio 4. How I Killed Margaret Thatcher, a bitter-sweet comic novel that captures the intensity of early 1980s Britain through the eyes of an unusual 9 year old Black Country boy, was published in 2012. His latest novel is Iron Towns.

I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Anthony Cartwright for taking an interest in the book and proposing the readings to bookshops he knows. I don’t know Anthony personally and have never met him, so it all came as a great surprise to receive such a boost out of the blue. I hope to equalise the debt – and I don’t mean by endless FB postings recommending Anthony’s books.
I hope one day to pass on the goodwill and be able to offer a debut writer whose book I have admired (perhaps one that hasn’t a big PR campaign behind it), an unexpected helping hand.

London_email

CONTINUE READING >
0 comments

West Cork Literary Festival

Posted by
Tweet

Absolutely thrilled to have received an invitation to the West Cork Literary Festival!!! My spot is on Tuesday, July 19th.

Looking forward to running into lots of newer writers such as Caitriona Lally, Gavin McCrea, Danielle McLaughlin, Tom Morris, Lisa McInerney, Joanna Walsh, and Paul McVeigh plus some of the more established writers such as John Banville, Lia Mills, and Zadie Smith. (Just to pick out a few I’m familiar with, there are lots more on the programme).

It’s in Bantry, Co. Cork, from July 17th – 23rd. Full programme here

CONTINUE READING >
0 comments

Selected Posts

  • Backstory of a book
    2019-02-22
  • Stinging Fly Wheldon essay
    2017-07-24
  • The Blocks by Karl Parkinson
    2016-10-02
  • London Trip
    2016-09-05
  • Honest Ulsterman interview
    2016-02-29
  • Greetings, Hero launch Hodges Figgis
    2014-11-21

Selected pages

  • Debut Book
  • Publications
  • Writers' Workbench at Block T

Crucial

  • . .
  • Asylum books
  • Buy the book at Kennys
  • Daniel Seery
  • David Mohan
  • Djelloul Marbrook
  • Gorse magazine
  • Slava Nesterov Artist
  • The Penny Dreadful
  • The road to publication
  • The Short Review
  • The Short Review
  • Unthology

Other links

  • . .
  • Karl Parkinson's The Blocks
  • Unthology 4 review
  • Wandering minstrel Larry Beau

What I'm up to

  • Buy the book at Kennys
  • Examiner review
  • Irish Times / Ashley Stokes
  • Irish Times Q+A Irish Times Q+A
  • The road to publication

Recent posts

  • Interpolated Stories, by David Rose
  • Renaud Contini’s The Infinite Castle
  • Hangdog Souls by Marc Joan
  • Writers’ Workbench, Block T Dublin 8
  • New writing course at Crumlin College
  • Human Wishes / Enemy Combatant Human Wishes / Enemy Combatant

Quotation

The Tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction
PREV 1 2 3 … 8 NEXT