Lucy Caldwell
@beingvarious
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Writer ✨ 2022 E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters ✨ OPENINGS coming May 24 ✨ All @FaberBooks & @FaberAcademy
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The stories so far… I am so thrilled to be able to tell you that Faber will be publishing my third collection of stories, Openings, in May 2024 ✨
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I love hearing Sheila Heti say, “I never feel exposed because there’s nothing inside me that isn’t in you. All writing is about all of us, so it doesn’t feel like I’m saying anything that isn’t just about the human experience.” Or as Wendy Erskine says, “The heart knows things.”
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Oh, Sinéad O’Connor. I’m thinking now, as I often have over the years, in deep gratitude as well as awe, of that gift of a sort of psychic freedom she gave to girls and young women, especially those growing up in the place and time we did.
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Hello! I’ve been asked to do a short thread with some of my stories available to read online so here goes! “All the People Were Mean and Bad” is here:
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I have news... I’ve written a new novel! It’s called These Days, and it’s set in the Belfast Blitz of April-May, 1941.
@FaberBooks
will publish it next spring, and you can read more about it here
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Raising a glass to the other great stories in here, to the judges (!), to the wonderful Di Speirs and her team, to Comma Press, and most of all to the most magical, elusive, beautiful form of the short story ✨
#BBCNSSA
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Nick Laird has just won the
@ForwardPrizes
for “Up Late”. It is an astonishing poem - it will stop time, stop breath, stop everything as you read. It does everything the best poetry can do. Online here, an elegy for our times.
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1 down, 1,999 to go (I think this is officially what’s known as a rake of books)
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A hauntingly pertinent letter written by the great Sylvia Townsend Warner in 1946...
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Today I… met one of my childhood heroines, author Elizabeth Laird, and my novel These Days was awarded the
@waltscottprize
. It feels very unreal. I am very, very grateful to
@FaberBooks
and to the Award, which had a stellar line-up of writers this year.
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Talking to writers starting out: your work won’t be for everyone, and that’s ok! You’re writing for the handful of people to whom it will matter, mean something, make a difference. And I always think, too, they might not even be born yet. Just keep on doing your thing ✨
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I thought it was my imagination that it seemed lighter this evening, then realised, no, by tomorrow we’ll have done the four darkest weeks of the year. Oh the relief! Hope there’s someone else that just now needed to hear that too…
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It is such a joy to see David Torrans of
@NOALIBISBOOKS
awarded an honorary doctorate by Queens for services to the local community. He & his bookshop are a beating heart of Botanic - and Belfast, and beyond. Thrilled to see this public recognition for him
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World is crazier and more of it than we think, / Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion / A tangerine and spit the pips and feel / The drunkenness of things...
#BeingVarious
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Devastating news about Lyra McKee. Here’s just some of her writing. There was so, so much more to come.
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So happy to announce a US book deal! These Days has found a great home with
@zandoprojects
at Sarah Jessica Parker’s imprint, SJP Lit. I look forward to working with editor Caolinn Douglas and SJP to bring the world of the Belfast Blitz to American readers in spring 25 ✨
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Thrilled to announce that I’m editing the forthcoming
@FaberBooks
anthology of New Irish Short Stories, the 6th in the series established by the late, great David Marcus.
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I think this must be one of my favourite covers yet. My short stories translated by Tülin Er, out in Turkish today with
@SirenKitap
!
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First finished copy! I’m so grateful to Lisa McGee, Kevin Barry, Jan Carson and David Park for their beautiful, generous words. And Jack Smyth
@Faberbooks
has done a gorgeous job. Out 6th May...
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And with the pop of a cork, Intimacies is officially launched! Thank you
@BrickLaneBooks
for the best non-launch launch of our times!
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I wrote a piece for the
@guardianreview
about East Belfast and growing up, basically, in Tullycarnet Library
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An unexpected and lovely thing to find out like this! Best of all is being on a shortlist alongside brilliant
@WednesdayErskin
- and really looking forward to the other collections. Thank you, and viva the short story ✨
The shortlist for the 2022 Edge Hill Prize is here. Congratulations to Iphgenia Baal, Lucy Caldwell, Wendy Erskine, Vanessa Onwuemezi and Saba Sams! Thank you to everyone who entered and to all our longlistees for keeping the short story alive.
:
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The paperback edition of Intimacies has been brought forward a couple of months, so it’s out in the world now - and how gorgeous is this! Design by Jack Smyth for
@FaberBooks
.
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What makes a writer - or anyone - Irish? For the day that’s in it: some thoughts from my intro to the forthcoming
#BeingVarious
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This summer I’ve read my way through the (close to 3,000 pages!) entirety of the Cazalet Chronicles. The deep pleasure of a long generational saga! Feeling bereft now. If you’re new to Elizabeth Jane Howard, or leery of Cazalet commitment, The Long View is a really good taster.
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Despite literally having a book out today, I failed to clock it was
#WorldBookDay
- cue a scramble this morning to improvise costumes for kids. But now, deep breath, and These Days is out in the world…
@FaberBooks
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In a year so strong they shortlisted 7 books rather than 5, I am so thrilled that These Days is here! The other books sound amazing. Thank you,
@waltscottprize
, I’m so grateful for all the new conversations with readers this will bring.
Discover the
#WalterScottPrize
for
#HistoricalFiction
shortlist 2023: books exploring martyrdom, self-knowledge, remorse, exile, art's human price, complex relationships under an unsettling sun and the impossibility of knowing exactly who we are >>
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I wrote an essay on the short story for
@IrishTimesBooks
- online later this week, in the meantime in the paper here.
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Morning sunshine… and back to editing a brand-new story. So good to be writing again, feeling alive 💛
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Been off Twitter for a little while so found this out the old-fashioned way - in the post! A wonderful surprise
@EHUShortStory
, thank you!
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Yes, yes! I was lucky enough to hear Anne Enright read a chapter from this last autumn, pages hot off the printer, and it had everyone rapt. Inhaling it now - the way she writes daughters and mothers, relationships, secrets, the unspoken, is pure joy. Out in September.
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I love editing, and do occasional manuscript editing / literary consultancy. With all of my March & April work/events cancelled, I’m free to take on a bit more. If you’re using social distancing to finish your novel or story collection, DM me for your bespoke package! Pls share!
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✨ It’s publication day! ✨
‘I still sometimes wonder if one could draw a window in the wall, or in the air, and step through it together. To somewhere else, entirely new.’
Openings, the new collection from
@beingvarious
, is out today.
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Well, here it is... Multitudes’ edgy older sister. Coming out next May with
@FaberBooks
!
#Intimacies
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Final page proofs for BEING VARIOUS: NEW IRISH SHORT STORIES, next May! So much more pleasant proofreading other writers’ work than your own :-)
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#BeingVarious
is published this week! I wrote about it, the incredible energy of Irish writing, and the politics of anthologising, here and here
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The finished hardback up close is so beautiful - it’s always such a wonder holding the first copy! I’m so grateful to Jack Smyth for his design, to the writers who have given the cover their words, and to David Torrans for his vision of a special limited edition.
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Completely obsessed, this week, with these two extraordinary novels by Paul Griffiths, beautifully published by the Henningham Family Press, in which Ophelia tells her story using just the 481 words the play of Hamlet allows her, achieving something transcendent.
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If you want to know or to understand more about what’s going on at the minute in Northern Ireland, especially if you’re not from here - there - then this trio of searing, witty, nuanced contemporary books is a pretty good place to start...
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The 250th birthday of the person I always think of as Belfast’s foremost citizen: Mary Ann McCracken. A force for good in the city and the world, she distributed anti-slavery tracts at the docks, campaigned tirelessly for children & the poor... Here she is in Bardon’s BELFAST:
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Finally finished a short story I first began 5 years ago, and of which I can count almost two dozen separate drafts (with increasingly despairing file names). Sometimes stories are like frescos, lots of thinking then swift in the writing, and sometimes really not…
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Look at all these beautiful books! The
@EHUShortStory
Award is the only UK/Ire prize dedicated to a short story collection. I’m very grateful! 🙏
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Thank you SO much to the beautiful
@Dauntbooks
Marylebone, to
@FaberBooks
, and to everyone who came for such a wonderful celebratory launch of These Days last night!
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Such a privilege to read at Paul Muldoon’s Picnic last night
@IrishArtsCenter
in Hell’s Kitchen. A Highline walk this morning before heading home - I just need to get a tote bag with Belfast emblazoned on it in gold and my work will be done…
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The lovely-looking paperback edition of These Days is out today! And because so many of you asked, there is a full-length audiobook released any day now, read by one of my favourite Belfast actors, Lisa Dwyer Hogg ✨
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Over the moon that my story “The Children” is part of this brilliant shortlist for the
#BBCNSSA
. It’s about Caroline Norton, an extraordinary woman who was until recently a new name on me - now I’m going to shout about her from the rooftops!
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Spotted in
@wstonesbelfast
, the gorgeous new paperback edition of my
@FaberBooks
anthology
#BeingVarious
, delayed for six months, but finally out in the world!
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Thrilled to have a brand new story in the legendary
@stingingfly
! It’s called “Words for Things”, and it’s from my collection Intimacies, out this May. You can read it online here:
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Finally, publication day for
@FaberBooks
#BeingVarious
! Dubliners, call into
@Hodges_Figgis
from 6-8pm tonight to raise a glass and meet the brilliant authors! If you’re in Belfast, stacks of signed copies now in
@NOALIBISBOOKS
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Found my beloved original Cranberries cd and playing it in the car for my children, transported back to the summer 12 yr old me begged and begged to go to Slane Castle (alone) to see them… (parents said no…)
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My short story “Daphne” begins on R4 in just a few minutes! It’s about a woman who, shocked by the loss of the great starling murmurations over East Belfast, decides to rewild her life, starting with herself… It’s read by Michelle Fairley.
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So happy to learn that These Days was chosen as a Sunday Times best historical fiction of the year!
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I spoke to
@BelTel
about celebrating NI writing, why there are still so many stories of the Troubles to be told, about the importance of genre fiction and the recent
@RSLiterature
’s NI Writers’ Day, the joys of Ulster Scots dialect and more…
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A new story of mine, “Daphne”, commissioned for BBC Radio 4’s Short Works series, and read beautifully by Michelle Fairley, will be broadcast this Fri 23rd at 3.45pm. It’s inspired by the great starling murmurations over East Belfast… More here!
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Winning the
#BBCNSSA
was an incredible validation of years spent writing short stories. It’s brought new readers, commissions, translations - I’m so grateful. And it’s now open for entries for 2022! Details here. Good luck!
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Amazing to wake into a sunny Belfast June morning with Intimacies as
@GuardianBooks
’ Book of the Day, and an “outstanding” write-up - thank you!
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I tried here to voice my profound gratitude - to the American Academy of Arts & Letters, to Edward Morgan Forster & Christopher Isherwood, those two beautiful writers, beautiful men, and to the spirit of hope & generosity that forged the EM Forster Award -
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I am so, so very grateful to be the recipient of a grant to help with my research into & writing on the Belfast Blitz. Walking my streets with my fingertips, every day of these strange days, through maps & diaries & memories, is helping get me through. Thank you
@ArtsCouncilNI
We have announced details of the first 88 artists who will benefit from our Artists Emergency Programme and will each receive grants of up to £5,000 to develop their projects and professional practice
#ACNISupported
#NationalLottery
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This time last year, I was so happy to see my second collection of stories, Intimacies, on literary calendars of the coming year. Bemused, amused and most of all grateful to see it... still there. Hoping for non-literary reasons too that May is here swiftly & safe
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“These days, though lost, will be all your days…” (MacNeice).
#TheseDays
, coming 3.3.22, 1st proof copy!
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It’s nothing in the grand scheme of things, but still with a heavy heart I write that Intimacies, like so many other books, is postponed for a year now: April 2021. Pre-ordering it or others you were looking forward to from your local indie would be an amazing gesture of support!
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Such a special memorial for the great Hilary Mantel at Southwark Cathedral in the spring sunshine. Amidst beautiful readings and reflections, her childhood friend Anne Preston recalled reading Shakespeare aloud together on a hearthrug in front of a gas fire - so, so very moving.
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Such a pleasure to read alongside the wonderful
@WednesdayErskin
this evening and to celebrate her deservedly winning the
@EHUShortStory
Readers’ Prize! And such congratulations to overall winner
@SamsSaba
on the brilliant Send Nudes. Viva the short story!
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Such a fabulous start to our US tour - a total privilege to read and talk (and laugh) at the Consulate and Columbia with these two beautiful writers, brilliant women,
@JanCarson7280
&
@michellegallen
about complex and inclusive visions of Irishness.
📸: Nuala Purcell
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This must be one of my favourite commissions ever - working with dark matter physicists at CERN for this
@commapress
anthology. It was a trip of a lifetime. I wove into my story, “Dark Matters”, Belfast-born genius John Stewart Bell. Can’t wait to read the rest. Out now!
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I love these words from Barbara Hepworth, one of my favourite artists, on making art whilst caring for young children, and embroiled in domestic drudgery…
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There’s a devoted band of us Miriam Toews fans and her forthcoming novel is just glorious - a child narrator written so irreverently and the best fictional grandma I’ve ever met. Loved it. Out with
@FaberBooks
next April!
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I’ve been lucky enough to attend beautiful Listowel Writers’ Week several times over the years, and thought this the best yet - the programming under
@closeandslow
was so exciting, and seemed rightly representative of the electric state of writing from the North of Ireland.
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I’m delighted to’ve been asked to record an episode of Radio 4’s Book Club, talking about These Days. If you’d like to join James Naughtie in the studio audience to ask me questions on 15 May, email bookclub
@bbc
.co.uk to reserve your free ticket!
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The morning has passed in a state of suspension on trains & buses, reading this.
@KennedyLoulou
writes so extraordinarily well what it is to be in a body - and in a particular place, at a particular time. Aching, evocative - just loving it.
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When I left primary school, my teachers, convinced I’d be a writer, and amused by my habit of writing tragic endings, gave me a copy of The Mill on the Floss. Little did we think I’d one day sign a ceremonial book with George Eliot’s own pen. Thank you so much
@RSLiterature
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I recorded a masterclass for
@ShortStoryAward
on intimacy and the 2nd person narrator, which has obsessed me in recent years... taking in Lorrie Moore, DFW, Musa Okwonga, Jay McInerney, John Hawkes, Mohsin Hamid, Susannah Dickey, Choose Your Own Adventure and more...
How to write short stories: Lucy Caldwell on using a second-person narrator in fiction
Watch Lucy's fifteen-minute masterclass here:
@beingvarious
@audibleuk
#shortstories
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Yess!! A devastatingly important book that will now find its readers so much more easily. Brava, Anna Burns and
@faberbooks
@ManBookerPrize
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The cover is designed by the wonderful Jack Smyth, it’s such a thing of beauty, and proof copies are going out now, so if you’d like one, get in touch with Faber…
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On the radio this afternoon at 3.30, my story “All the People Were Mean and Bad” (slightly abridged), read by Laura Pyper. You can listen here, or at this link afterwards:
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Two striking, v different Irish debuts- with the lovely communality that Aimée & Catriona both studied with me
@FaberAcademy
. Exile is a taut, accomplished addition to recent Belfast novels of the disaffected young; Habitat an uncanny fable of (and for) a disintegrating world…
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A very giddy feeling: I’ve only just pressed send on the final final final changes to These Days, but the first advance review’s already out (in the
@thebookseller
)…
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I’m so proud to be a Patron of the brilliant
@BelfastBookFest
- now live with a phenomenal programme! I’ll be interviewing Colm Tóibín, Kevin Barry, talking about Openings and celebrating the Martín Crawford Award winners - and so much more. Tix here!
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So much to congratulate fellow Nordies on this morning -
@WednesdayErskin
@JanCarson7280
@Heresmehere
&
@HughesPeg
on election to the
@RSLiterature
last night &
@michaelmagee__
on
@Waterstones
debut fiction prize shortlisting. What a brilliant, irrepressible part of the world.
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If you read just one review of Intimacies... It’s more than I could have expected, feeling a bit out of words
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A new short story of mine, “Lay Me Down”, love & longing at a Christmas drinks party in East Belfast, is published in today’s Irish Times magazine, and online here:
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The first twelve settlers are leaving for Mars, never to return. On the eve of her departure, a young Peckham midwife works out how to say goodbye, as her Irish-Caribbean family tries to imagine life without her. My new radio play, MARTIANS, is on tomorrow at 2.15pm on BBC R4
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And I’ve been away, so missed official publication, but wanted to add my voice to the celebration of this masterpiece of a novel by
@KennedyLoulou
. Here’s what I said on the back. You don’t read so much as feel it, all of it… Brava Louise 💛
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I loved this by Jessica Au - precise and yet elusive, in that way a dream slips from you as you attempt to retell it, elegiac, melancholy, far more than its handful of eighty-something pages.
@FitzcarraldoEds
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Double-checking the Ulster-Scots word for baby bird (“a wee scaldy”) that my grandma used, and tumbled down a rabbit-hole of other wheeker words:
An attercap: a spiteful person
Caleeried: light-headed
Carnaptious: quick-tempered
Dishables: casual clothes!
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This afternoon on Open Book at 4pm,
@chris_power
,
@frankcottrell_b
,
@aminattaforna
& I talk beginnings and endings. It felt a very special programme as we recorded it - I hope you agree. The link to listen, live & afterwards, is here. Happy new year all x
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Belfast friends! Some super-exciting news: on 9th May
@NOALIBISBOOKS
is throwing a launch party for Openings, celebrating their ltd ed hardback, which comes with a bonus story, AND matching tote bag! Tix free but booking essential.
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A special day today seeing the postage-stamp-sized book I made with my daughter for the
@RCT
’s miniature library. I handwrote the title story of Intimacies, Orla illustrated it, and Gillian Stewart bound it so beautifully.
📸 Bookbinder Gillian Stewart ()
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A gift of a first review by Kevin Power, writing in
@ReviewIndo
- a masterclass in close reading and attention. I’m very grateful 💛
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This book! It is incredible - from the initial pleasures of Adrian Mole-as-anthropologist to wild Rabelasian excesses, spinning you helplessly in its thrall through time… Frank Wynne’s translation is superlative - incandescently brilliant & alive.
@Terribleman
@FitzcarraldoEds
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