Updated / Friday, 5 Mar 2021
15:17
We re delighted to present an extract from
Pure Gold, the debut collection of short stories by John Patrick McHugh, published by New Island.
Set on an imagined island off the west coast of Ireland, John Patrick McHugh s debut collection of stories conjures a complete and varied cast of characters – some lost, some lonely, many dreaming and others self-deceiving - casting a bold eye on masculinity, family and class, friendships and betrayal, and embedding us in the moments on which a life can twist and turn.
Bonfire
That summer we lit fires. Terry and I.
We d meet in the mornings, when oats still gummed my molars and the sky was beginning to shake itself blue. Two of us dressed in thready-sleeved jerseys; two of us decorated with scabs and cuts and small, sloughing burnholes. When we had money, we chucked it together and bought matches from Brett’s Newsagent. And when we had no spare coppers – the more likely – we snatched clicke
‘Any time we go on holiday, I miss that routine of going to the desk and working every day. I must be a terrible person to be on holidays with,” says John Patrick McHugh. “I remember we went to Cork for a long weekend, and I was like, ‘Ciara, can I just do three hours?’ I went under the stairs to work on a story.”
The idea of a weekend away anywhere seems fanciful these days, which is why the author’s gleeful confession is distressing to hear. While Ciara has our sympathies, McHugh, in fairness to him, does explain that once you’re in the writing flow, you have to grab it because it might not be there the next day.
First of all: Irish writers on their debut novels coming out in 2021 From Louise Nealon’s coming-of-age tale to Una Mannion’s American nightmare
Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 06:00 Niamh Donnelly
Louise Nealon lives on a dairy farm in Kildare with her family.
Snowflake (Manilla, May) is a coming-of-age tale about a young woman who struggles to cope when she moves away from her family farm and steps into life in Trinity College Dublin.
What was the hardest thing about writing Snowflake? The thought of sitting down to write is not very appealing to me, which is unfortunate, as well as embarrassing, for a person who calls herself a writer. When I was working on Snowflake, I had to constantly confront my own insecurities. Every day without fail, my inner critic would remind me that I couldn’t string a sentence together. The moment I finished the last sentence of th
Multimedia Journalist
Irish fiction continues to thrive and the year ahead offers a feast of novels and short story collections set for publication - we present a choice selection.
Danielle McLaughlin -
The Art of Falling (John Murray, February)
A woman s marriage and career are threatened by an old indiscretion just as she receives the opportunity of a lifetime. Danielle s stories have appeared in
The New Yorker, The Irish Times and
The Stinging Fly, amongst numerous other magazines and anthologies. She has won many awards for her short fiction, collected in
Dinosaurs on Other Planets.
The Art of Falling will be published in January 2021 by Random House in the US