News: Eoin McNamee Shortlisted for Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year

Hearty congratulations to Eoin McNamee, whose BLUE IS THE NIGHT has been shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year award. Eoin is nominated alongside David Butler, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Patrick O’Keeffe and Eibhear Walshe, and the winner will be announced on May 29th, during Listowel Writers’ Week. For all the details, clickety-click here …
  I reviewed BLUE IS THE NIGHT a couple of weeks ago: “a beguiling, gripping tale that deserves to be considered a masterpiece of Irish noir fiction, regardless of whether its hue is black or the darkest blue.” For the full review, clickety-click here …

World Book Night: And Miles To Read Before I Sleep …

You may or may not know that tonight is World Book Night, in which tons of books are given away free to stimulate reading. A good idea, I think, no matter how you look at it.
  Naturally, being something of a contrarian, I decided that it’d be nice notion to look into the possibility of an Alternative World Book Night - i.e., to ask a number of writers, poets et al to nominate a recently published book that they consider to be unjustly overlooked by the critics and public alike. The result was published in the Irish Times on Saturday, with the most fascinating / totally bonkers answer coming from poet David Lordan. To wit:

CYCLONOPEDIA: COMPLICITY WITH ANONYMOUS MATERIALS
By Reza Negarestani (re.press, 2008)
“I’d like to plump for the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani’s genre-bending ‘Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials’. It’s one for active readers and fans of “difficult work”. A continuously inventive and artistically ambitious work that, like many great literary refoundations, is simultaneously a reimagining of reality and a reorientating of literature against currently dominant trends. Negarestani draws on a polyglot engagement with contemporary theory and on a schizophrenic, inhumanist literary heritage including Lovecraft, Stein, Burroughs and Pynchon, to give us an astounding depiction of history as a minor subplot within a struggle of much older, more vast forces. Cyclonopedia refreshed my paranoia and left me more doubtful and contemptuous of things-as-they-are than ever before, something the most sustaining works of art have always done for me.” - David Lordan

  For the rest, which includes nominations from George Pelecanos, Aifric Campbell, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, China Miéville, Sara Paretsky, Mark Billingham and more, clickety-click here …

Flash! It May Save Every One Of Us …

I had a piece on flash fiction published in the Irish Times a couple of weeks ago, and the response to it was phenomenal. Not to my piece, per se, but to the fact that the Irish Times requested examples of flash fiction. In fact, so impressive was the response - in quality and quantity - that the Irish Times today publishes a selection of flash fiction, a feature that is to become a regular item in the newspaper. As far as I know, submission is open to all, regardless of where you’re from. First, the feature:

Flash fiction – very short, bite-sized stories – has become the favourite form of many writers. It’s succinct, punchy and effective – perfect for the online reader and perfectly in synch with the times, writes DECLAN BURKE

LESS HAS always been more in the writing of fiction, but “flash fiction” takes the concept to a whole new level. In essence, a flash fiction is a very short short story, the classic example being attributed to Ernest Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
  “Flash fiction appeals because it gets right to the heart of human experience in just a few words,” says author Alison Wells. “Its brevity and condensed resonance make sure it lingers in the mind and heart. It has the power of a poem but with greater clarity and accessibility.”
  Nuala Ní Chonchúir is a novelist, poet and short-story writer. “Lovers of flash fiction, like poets, value brevity and the hit of surprise that flash often delivers,” she says. “A good flash story is intense, urgent and often a little explosive, but also deep and clear, so the effect on the reader is like that of a poem – as you read it you admire its concision and, afterwards, it lingers.” The format is quickly gaining credibility. The Dublin Review of Books , for example, announced Ní Chonchúir as the winner of its second annual flash fiction competition recently, securing her a prize of €1,000.

  For the rest, clickety-click here …
  For today’s samples of flash fiction in the Irish Times, clickety-click here …
  Anyone wishing to submit examples of their flash fiction should email them to flashfiction@irishtimes.com.