Short Stories

Winner – Irish Short Story of the Year

24 November 2022Awards, Blog, Event, Events, News, Short StoriesAn Post Irish Book Awards, Awards, Book Awards, Dementia, Irish short story, Nuala O'Connor, short fiction, Short Story of the Year, This Small Giddy Life, Vanessa O'Loughlin, writing.ieNuala Ní Chonchúir

I was genuinely delighted to win Short Story of the Year at the Irish Book Awards for my story This Small Giddy Life about two daughters and their wandering, wonderful mother who gets dementia. My own mother is living with this curious condition, so it is a close-to-my-heart story. You can read the story in the New Island anthology, A Little Unsteadily Into Light, available here.

Thanks so much to An Post (awards sponsors) and writing.ie (short story award sponsors), especially Vanessa O’Loughlin. Thanks to New Island books and editor Jan Carson, for commissioning the story. We had a lovely night of celebration last night at the Convention Centre in Dublin. See my insta for (not many more) pics here.

Shortlisting – Short Story of the Year

21 October 2022Awards, Events, News, Short StoriesA Little Unsteadily Into Light, An Post, An Post Irish Book Awards, APIBAS, Dementia, New Island, short fiction, Short Stories, Short Story of the Year, shortlistNuala Ní Chonchúir

Shortlisted! My dementia story *This Small Giddy Life* from the New Island Books anthology A Little Unsteadily Into Light is up for the writing.ie Story of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2022. We had a lovely shortlisters’ event at the GPO last night. This story is meaningful to me as I took elements of my mother’s dementia to fictionalise. She’s still with us, and doing well, TG.

Voting is open now, see all shortlistees below: Vote here.

Thanks to editors Jan Carson & Jane Lugea and all at New Island & Vanessa of Writing.ie. This is my fifth Book Awards shortlisting, maybe this year I’ll take something home other than memories of a great, chat-filled, glammy night. The big event is the 23rd November and I can’t wait!

Neil Paul of Tertulia Books, Mayo, and Nuala

SHORT STORY OF THE YR – LONGLIST

20 September 2022Awards, News, Short StoriesAn Post, APIBAS, short fiction, Short Stories, short story, Story of the Year, writing.ieNuala Ní Chonchúir

One of my short stories – can’t say which for now – has been longlisted in the An Post Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year category, run by writing.ie, which is lovely.

Shortlist will be announced 20th October. So crossing fingers!

Here are the longlisted writers:

Roisín O’Donnell
Eamon McGuinness
Wendy Erskine
Nuala O’Connor
Tim MacGabhann
Sheila Armstrong
Danielle McLaughlin
David Butler
Neil Tully
Colin Barrett
Twist Phelan
Rebecca Miller

RODDY DOYLE @ POLITICS & PROSE

22 February 2022Events, Interviews, Short StoriesInterview, interviews, Politics and Prose, Roddy Doyle, Solas NuaNuala Ní Chonchúir

Roddy Doyle and I had a great chat about short fiction and his new collection at Politics and Prose. Watch it back on YouTube now: https://youtu.be/p2m6VmEpj5I

Roddy Doyle interview

8 February 2022Events, Interviews, News, Short StoriesInterview, interviews, Life Without Children, online event, Politics and Prose, Roddy Doyle, short fiction, Short Stories, short story, WashingtonNuala Ní Chonchúir

I’m interviewing Roddy Doyle, online at Politics and Prose in Washington, about short fiction. This event celebrates the USA publication day for Roddy’s book Life Without Children, which is a warm, funny, poignant collection of ten stories. Join us! 5pm USA, 10pm Ireland. More here.

FLASH PANEL IN NZ VIDEO

20 June 2021Blog, Event, Events, Flash Fiction, Flash Fiction, Interviews, NewsFlash Fiction, Ken Elkes, KM Elkes, national flash fiction day, New Zealand, panel, panel discussionNuala Ní Chonchúir

You can now watch the Truth and Lies in Short Forms panel for National Flash Fiction Day New Zealand. Go here.

Flash – Fictive Dream

16 April 2021Blog, Flash Fiction, Flash Fiction, News, Short StoriesFictive Dream, flash, Flash Fiction, ProntobabyNuala Ní Chonchúir

I have a new flash at Fictive Dream today. TW for pregnancy loss.

Read it here.

11th Dec. – READING WITH MÁIGHRÉAD MEDBH

7 December 2020Birdie, Flash Fiction, NewsNuala Ní Chonchúir

Máighréad Medbh and I will be doing an online flash fiction and poetry reading on Friday December 11th at 7pm, Irish time. We’d be delighted if you’d join us, to hear us read and celebrate the publication of Máighréad’s new book, Imbolg.

Time: Dec 11, 2020 07:00pm GMT
To join the Zoom Event email in advance: maighreadmedbh@gmail.com

* * *

Nuala O’Connor lives in Co. Galway, Ireland. Her forthcoming fifth novel, NORA, is about Nora Barnacle, wife and muse to James Joyce; it appears in January 2021 in the USA and in Ireland in April. Her new chapbook of historical flash fiction, Birdie, was recently published by Arlen House. Nuala is editor at flash e-zine Splonk.

Máighréad Medbh lives in Dublin. Imbolg, just published by Arlen House, is her eighth book of poetry, and incorporates older work with a sequence written this year. Her previous book, Parvit of Agelast, is a verse fantasy and was shortlisted for the 2017 Pigott Prize. She has also published a prose work, Savage Solitude, with Dedalus Press. She has been known as a performance poet, and is currently working on a creative-critical PhD at DCU.

Imbolg can be bought here:https://www.bookdepository.com/Imbolg…/9781851322473

Birdie can be bought as an ebook here: https://books2read.com/u/mKzXkV
For Kindle here: https://amzn.to/3ogSJLO
Hard copy here: https://www.kennys.ie/shop/Birdie-O-Connor-Nuala or here: https://www.bookdepository.com/

‘Tin’ – story in The Lonely Crowd

7 December 2020News, Short StoriesPrincess Mary Tin, short fiction, short story, The Lonely Crowd, Tin, WW1Nuala Ní Chonchúir

My story ‘Tin’ about a Fermanagh love triangle, in early WW1, is in the new edition of literary journal The Lonely Crowd, and it’s also online. You can read it here.

I also wrote a short piece about the writing of the story and it’s here.

Birdie – Irish Times Review

5 December 2020Birdie, Flash Fiction, NewsFlash Fiction, Historical fiction, historical flash, the irish timesNuala Ní Chonchúir

I’m very pleased with this review of my historical flash fiction chapbook, Birdie, in today’s Irish Times. Thanks to Ruth McKee.

Birdie
By Nuala O’Connor
Arlen House, €10.00 Sat, Dec 5, 2020, 06:00

As you would expect from O’Connor, this collection of flash fiction is a menagerie of exquisite language. The stories transport us to moments in time, and to no-time, as the author paints fragments of history that are palpable with characters who come alive in a brushstroke. Artists and sitters are here as are servants, soldiers, mothers and sisters in stories of losing, longing, and home. Historical fiction can sometimes be clogged with research – not so in these stories which are glances, swift and sensory, with grace-notes of details to let us recognise where we are. Here is the “crookedness of nature,” the lure and lore of home but also the emigrant, the lost lover, the perished child. This collection takes us from the olagón to the “shale-and-ripple of a shell”: a pearl. – Ruth McKee

NUALA O'CONNOR

has also written as Nuala Ní Chonchúir