Irish Short Story Week Update-Emerging Irish Women Writers Event-MoreResources

Day Eight Update 

Irish Short Story Week Year Two

March 12 to April 11
March 23 to March 29-Folk and Fairy Tales
March 23 to March 29
new event!
Emerging Irish Women Writers Week

Resources and Ideas for Irish Short Story Week

March 26/27 Susan of You Can Never Have To Many Books and I plan a joint post on 4 short stories by Bernie McGill (all can be read online)

I have also been having a lot of fun listening to a wide variety of Irish radio stations the last few weeks.  I use for this on my Ipad (also works on Iphones)  an application called Tune in Radio.  Some stories call for a haunting Celtic lament others for some good old fashioned pub music.   


I wish to offer my great gratitude to  the Sayajirao Gaelwad Institute  for their patronage of The Reading Life.

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two, March 12 to March 31.   All you need do is post on one short story by an Irish author and send me a comment or an email and I will include it in the master post at the end of the event. 

I want to be sure that no one misses any of the great posts that people have so far completed for Irish Short Story Week Year Two so I will start out with a list of posts.  I will still be doing an end of event post in which I spotlight as best I can each blog.  This list is in random order and is just done so no one misses anything.

You Can Never Have Too Many Books "No Angel" by Bernie Mcgill
Susan has also now done a post on James Joyce's "The Sisters" that I learned a lot from-

Beauty is a Sleeping Cat Stories by Kevin Barry, James Joyce, and Elizabeth Bowen 

Free Listens  "The Wine Breath" by John Mcgahern

Lakeside Musings- "The Empty Family" by Colum Toibin

Parrish Lantern  Overview of Irish Folk and Fairy Tales by William Butler Yeats-Parrish Lantern now has a wonderful post on a story by Gerald Griffin about the horrors of the famine years and a folk take from William Trevors' Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories

A Simple Clockwork  Two Oscar Wilde Fairy Tales-Nancy,  the Host of Short Stories on Wednesday has done two illuminating posts on stories of Marie Edgeworth, the first serious Irish Woman short story writer

Buried In Print an Anthology of stories by Mary Lavin, In the Middle of the Field

"Glad to have so many wonderful visitors, and
Rory is the worst shoe leprechaun ever!"
Carmilla

From Kafka to Kintergarden "The First Confession"  by Frank O'Connor, "The Reaping Race" by Liam O'Flaherty, "Janey Mary" by James Plunket, and "The Confirmation Suit" by Brendan Behan.  There is a new post on The Space between Louis and Me by Mary O'Donnell and Sightseeing in Louth by Bernadette M. Smyth.  Both of these are new to me authors.  

Vapor Trails  "The Old Man of the Sea" by Maeve Brennan, and also "Something Special" which is Iris Murdoch's only published story story


New Posts since the first update


The Sill of the World has an excellent post on "The Dead" by James Joyce




Bibliophiliac  has done a great post on "The Will" which  Frank O'Connor says is Mary Lavin's best story


Shauna Gilligan, a widely published short story writer from Dublin has contributed a very welcome guest post to Irish Short Story Week Year Two  devoted to Somewhere in Minnesota,  a powerful collection of short stories by Órfhlaith Foyle 

Jillian of A Room of One's Own has done a very insightful moving post on "The Dead" by James Joyce


A Work in Process has done great posts on "The Happy Autumn Fields" by Elizabeth Bowen, this is one of Bowen's WWII stories and is a great cultural treasure.  There is also a very good post on William Trevor's "The Ballroom of Romance".


Winston's Dad has posted on a story by Oliver Goldsmith "The History of the Man in Black


Tales from the Reading Room has done a great post on Colm Toibin's new book New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families.

Emerging Irish Women Writers

March 23 to March 29

I have decided to add another "event" to Irish Short Story Week Year Two.   Running at the same time as Irish Folk and Fairy Tales Week (March 23 to March 29) there will also be a a series of seven posts on emerging Irish Women writers.    Up until fairly recently, the Irish short story  was a male dominated genre.   Of the 46 stories included in William Trevor's Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories only seven are by women.   Of the 15 stories in Frank O'Connor's collection Classic Irish Short Stories, only three are by women.   Things get a bit more balanced as we advance to 2010 and New Irish Short Stories, nine out of 27 stories are by women.   I have not seen the collection of short stories edited by Anne Enright but is is restricted to authors born in the 20th century so perhaps it is better balanced.  If you look at some of the online literary journals, I have added a link to a very well done comprehensive list of UK and Irish Literary Journals on my resources page (126 in all).   I took a look at some of these journals and my quick take was it was at most 25 percent women contributing to short stories on these journals.   This is part of the reason for Emerging Irish Women Authors Week.  Another part of the reason for this, a personal reason, is that I have three teenage daughters, 14, 16, and 18 and a 26 year old step-daughter so I want to do what I can to increase my understanding of the world they live in and see.  It does not always overlap with the world I live in!   For another reason, I really just want to do this!   I have found some great stories already.  All stories featured can be read online for free and most of the authors have webpages which I will list when I can find them.  My criterion for emerging is sort of a rough one.  If you have published a few short stories or even one or two novels but still do not have a Wikipedia page dedicated to you then you are an emerging writer.  Defacto this means most writers will be relatively young but this is not always going to be true.


An excellent resource for stories by Emerging Irish writers, men or women, is
Wordlegs

The Irish Writers Center in Dublin also is a great source of information and reading ideas


I am really enjoying this event and totally appreciate all of the great posts by participants.   There is still plenty of time to join us.  In fact I am so into this I might add on one more week but I am still pondering it.

"Please Join Me, also let me know if your shoes need work"
Rory

  

Mel u