Irish Short Story Month Year III At the Mid Point

March 1 to March 31

At the Mid-Point

Irish Short Story Month for 2013 is now at mid-point.  One of my biggest personal goals this year was to discover lots of new to me writers.  That has already happened in abundance and I expect to discover more before the month is over.  

The support from the Irish literary community has been great.  I thank those who have done Q and A sessions, contributed articles, and sent in short stories to be published.   To my readers, there are a lot more wonderful items from Irish writers still in the works and I do expect some exciting new developments before the month is over.   

some general remarks

Welcome to my event-
Carmilla

  As I have said before, I am not an academic or a scholar.  I respect those who are but I do not defer to authorities just on the basis of credentials.  I make no claims of expertise in Irish literature (in fact I only began to read short stories three years ago).   My only serious secondary reading in Irish literature is Declan Kiberd's Inventing Ireland:   The Literature of the Modern Nation.  Kiberd looks at Irish literature through the post-colonial perspective developed by Edward Said.   I am comfortable with this and have used it in talking about Asian short stories.  I am also trying to ponder if Kiberd is right when he says the dominant theme of modern (meaning post Dubliners) Irish literature is that of the weak or missing father.  I do see it in many of the stories I have read.  Kiberd treats this as a legacy of colonialism and a consequence of the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland.  In every Q and A I ask this and I realize it is bordering on an offensive question as it seems a direct attack on the Irish character.  Tied in with this is the question of the "stage Irishman" and the pervasiveness of alcohol in many of the stories.  Many of the stories deal with death, loneliness, and coping with isolation. Many of the stories have a whistling pass the grave yard dark humor.  Irish writers work in the shadows of giants.  

Ways to Participate for Writers

1. Do a Q and A Session-Irish short stories are not written by isolated people working in The Tower but by real people with families, non-writing jobs, bills to pay and children to raise. Most are very internet involved, as I am.   I know there are lots of social elements in the Irish literary community.  I know the literary festival and workshop are very important.  I understand the crash of the Irish economy has made it harder to be a writer and make a living.  I hope my Q and A sessions will become a resource where the world of the Irish short story writer can be partially understood.  I am also getting lots of great reading ideas from the Q and A sessions.  

2.   Submit a short story for publication.  I know publishing on a book blog is a 

      new idea, I know it does not have the prestige of print journals or online 

      literary journals but I do have a fantastic group of readers from all over the

      world who would love to read your work and learn about you.

3.  Submit an article, it can be as serious or as light as you like, on anything 

     related to the Irish short story.  I will soon be posting several of these works.

4.  Make comments on Posts or Q and A sessions

For My Fellow Book Bloggers

I love the international book blog community.  I do not make as many comments on other book blogs as I once did but I still read them.  I am concerned how I will follow book blogs now that Google reader is closing down.  For book bloggers, just do a post on your blog, send me and e mail or leave a comment any where on my blog and I will see it.  There is no sign in sheet.  Any thing Irish short story related you want to do is fine.  I will keep a master list and I will publicise your post and blog.  

I am open to suggestions of any kind.  The less Irish Short Story Month Year III is just me blathering away, the better it will be.  

 

I know I am posting a lot and my readers not into the Irish short story may feel left out. I will return to my other core interests soon, Asian post colonial fiction, classics, modern literature and interesting short stories of all nations. I also sometimes blog on history and non-fiction.  My project 196 will continue on!  I do strongly urge those not into the Irish story to try a few, read the Q and A sessions and a whole new wonderful reading world may open for you just as it did for me when I first conducted Irish Short Story Month (then only a week) in 2011.  

I will say the Irish short story will always be a very big part of my blog.  One of my very top priorities as a blogger is to support Irish writers.  Later in the year I am going to have a month devoted to short stories of the Indian sub-continent but more on that later.

Bottom line-join in

My blog is not at all an attempt to get those who do not enjoy reading to start, it is for those who love to read. I know lots of people come here looking for help on their homework and that is fine but just don't blame me when your professor asks you where you got your crazy ideas.  I do not consider myself a book reviewer and I do not like to be called that!.  I read things and I post on them.  I am almost always positive in my posts as I do not post on what I do not like, with some exceptions for things I read for special events like The Caine Prize Stories where I have committed to an organization to read all of a set of works.  In those cases, I have turned on works I do not like.  I do not like works that seem to insult the intelligence of their readers or patronize their subjects.   

I am open to posts on short stories by authors of Irish parents or grandparents who lived in Australia, New Zealand, or Argentina.  I posted last year on Representative Irish-American writers.