2011 Festival Events
The 2011 festival readings took place at the Metropole Hotel, featuring work by literary great writers from Ireland and abroad, including those shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Other readings included a showcase of Stinging Fly authors, an RTÉ/ Frances MacManus winner reading by professional actors, along with readings by the authors who won the Seán Ó Faoláin prize and the Hennessy Prize.
The CISSF also featured public interviews with many authors, a seminar on short story anthologies, a Frank O'Connor literary walking tour, along with the chance to borrow free 'Personal Mobile Short Story Festival' MP3 players, with short stories from from Aidan Stanley's Book on One radio series.
Workshops were held at the Munster Literature Centre itself, including a beginners' workshop with California-based Irish writer Ethel Rohan. We also introduced our first four-day workshop which was for advanced students, facilitated by English writer Clare Wigfall.
The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award was presented to Edna O'Brien and the Seán Ó Faoláin Prize went to P.G. O'Connor. O’Brien received a standing ovation as she accepted the award. “This is lovely, wonderful,” she said. “When Maureen Stapleton won an Academy Award, she said she’d like to thank everyone she’d ever met. I should probably limit that to Munster… I’d like to thank this wonderful festival for doing so much to stimulate the dying flower called literature.”
Download the festival timetable. (454 kb)
Download the festival brochure. (4.3 mb)
Go to events on: Wednesday * Thursday * Friday * Saturday * Sunday
WEDNESDAY
Helen Dunmore reading, with interview by Alannah Hopkin
Wednesday, 14 September at 7.30pm.
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Helen Dunmore is a poet, novelist and children’s writer. Her poetry has won her the Cardiff International Poetry Prize, Alice Hunt Bartlett Award and Signal Poetry Award, and Bestiary was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her latest Bloodaxe poetry titles are Out of the Blue: Poems 1975-2001 (2001) and Glad of These Times (2007). She has published ten novels and three books of short stories with Viking Penguin, including A Spell of Winter (winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, 1995), Talking to the Dead (1996), The Siege (2001), Mourning Ruby (2003), House of Orphans (2006).
Alannah Hopkin has lived in County Cork since 1982. Her latest book is The Ship of Seven Murders, the true story of a tragic incident on board a ship sailing to Cobh in 1828, co-written with Kathy Bunney. She is also the author of Eating Scenery: West Cork, the People and the Place, an account of the people, past and present, who have made west Cork the place it is today. As a journalist she contributes occasionally to the Irish Arts Review, the Irish Examiner, and the Irish Times, and writes for Fodor Travel Publications and Insight Guides. She also writes about contemporary Irish art and is a member of the Association Internationale de Critiques d'Art (AICA). She is one of this year's judges for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.
Faber reading with Órfhlaith Foyle and Peter Murphy
Wednesday, 14 September at 9pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Órfhlaith Foyle was born in Africa to Irish parents. Her first novel Belios was published by The Lilliput Press in 2005. Revenge, an anthology of her poetry and short fiction was published by Arlen House also in 2005. Her first full collection of poetry Red Riding Hood’s Dilemma was published by Arlen House in 2010 and later short-listed for the Rupert and Eithne Strong Award in 2011. Her first full collection of short stories Somewhere in Minnesota and Other Stories is to be published by Arlen House in 2011. The title story was recently published in Faber and Faber’s New Irish Short Stories; edited by Joseph O’ Connor. Órfhlaith is currently writing her second novel.
Peter Murphy was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford. His first novel John the Revelator was published in the UK and Ireland by Faber & Faber and in the US by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and was nominated for the 2011 IMPAC literary award and shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Book Awards. His short story ‘The Blacklight Ballroom’ was included in The News From Dublin, an anthology of Irish short stories, published by Faber and edited by Joseph O’Connor. One of Ireland’s most foremost arts writers, his journalism has been published in Rolling Stone, Music Week, the Irish Times, and he served as a contributing editor with Hot Press magazine. Peter is also a regular guest on RTE’s arts review show The View and has contributed liner notes to the forthcoming remastered Anthology of American Folk Music.
THURSDAY
Canadian Writers Interview with Alexander MacLeod, Deborah Willis & Michael Christie by Clare Wigfall
Thursday, 15 September at 4pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Alexander MacLeod was born in Inverness, Cape Breton and raised in Windsor, Ontario. His first collection of short stories (Light Lifting--Biblioasis, 2010), was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Prize, two Atlantic Book Awards, and went on to become a national bestseller. Alexander holds degrees from the University of Windsor, the University of Notre Dame, and McGill; he currently lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and teaches at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, in Canada.
Deborah Willis was born and raised in Calgary, AB. Her fiction has appeared in Grain, Event, Prism International, and The Walrus. Her first book, Vanishing and Other Stories, was named one of the Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2009, and was nominated for the BC Book Prize and the Governor General’s Award. She has worked as a horseback riding instructor and a reporter, and currently works as a bookseller in Victoria, BC.
Michael Christie was born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario. He recently worked for six years in a homeless shelter on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Canada’s poorest neighborhood, providing outreach to the severely mentally ill. His first book, The Beggar’s Garden, a collection of stories set in Vancouver, published by HarperCollins Canada, was released in early 2011. “Tenderness, whimsy, goofiness, brilliance — a polished gem of narrative.”- Globe and Mail. “The Beggar’s Garden is about as good as a first book can be.” – The Toronto Star. He holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia, and his fiction has been twice nominated for the Journey Prize, Canada’s top short story honour. He is also a former professional skateboarder, and is currently an editor for Color, a skateboard magazine based in Vancouver.
Clare Wigfall's debut collection of short stories The Loudest Sound and Nothing was published in 2007 to critical acclaim. In 2008 she won the internationally renowned BBC National Short Story Award for 'The Numbers', one of the stories from her collection. She currently lives in Berlin.
Suzanne Rivecca interviewed by Patrick Cotter
Thursday, 15 September at 5pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Suzanne Rivecca’s first book, Death is Not an Option was a finalist for The Story Prize, The PEN/Hemingway Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. It is now shortlisted for the 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story award. She is the recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as writing fellowships from Radcliffe and Stanford University. She is currently living in Rome and San Francisco, CA.
Patrick Cotter is a writer and publisher, and the Artistic Director of the Munster Literature Centre. Educated at UCC, he has published several chapbooks of his poems including The Misogynist’s Blue Nightmare (Raven Arts Press), A Socialist’s Dozen (Three Spires Press), and The True Story of Aoife and Lir’s Children & other poems (Three Spires Press). His first collection, Perplexed Skin, was published by Arlen Press in 2008. His second collection, Making Music, was published in early 2009 by Three Spires Press.
Canadian Writers Reading with Deborah Willis & Michael Christie
Thursday, 15 September at 7.30pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Deborah Willis was born and raised in Calgary, AB. Her fiction has appeared in Grain, Event, Prism International, and The Walrus. Her first book, Vanishing and Other Stories, was named one of the Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2009, and was nominated for the BC Book Prize and the Governor General’s Award. She has worked as a horseback riding instructor and a reporter, and currently works as a bookseller in Victoria, BC.
Michael Christie was born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario. He recently worked for six years in a homeless shelter on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Canada’s poorest neighborhood, providing outreach to the severely mentally ill. His first book, The Beggar’s Garden, a collection of stories set in Vancouver, published by HarperCollins Canada, was released in early 2011. “Tenderness, whimsy, goofiness, brilliance — a polished gem of narrative.”- Globe and Mail. “The Beggar’s Garden is about as good as a first book can be.” – The Toronto Star. He holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia, and his fiction has been twice nominated for the Journey Prize, Canada’s top short story honour. He is also a former professional skateboarder, and is currently an editor for Color, a skateboard magazine based in Vancouver.
Shortlistees Reading with Suzanne Rivecca & Alexander MacLeod
Thursday, 15 September at 9pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Suzanne Rivecca’s first book, Death is Not an Option was a finalist for The Story Prize, The PEN/Hemingway Award, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. She is the recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as writing fellowships from Radcliffe and Stanford University. She is currently living in Rome and San Francisco, CA.
Alexander MacLeod was born in Inverness, Cape Breton and raised in Windsor, Ontario. His first collection of short stories (Light Lifting--Biblioasis, 2010), was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Prize, two Atlantic Book Awards, and went on to become a national bestseller. Alexander holds degrees from the University of Windsor, the University of Notre Dame, and McGill; he currently lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and teaches at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, in Canada.
FRIDAY
Valerie Trueblood Interview by Nuala Ní Chonchúir
Friday, 16 September at 3pm.
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork. Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Valerie Trueblood grew up in rural Virginia, USA, studied with John Hawkes and John Berryman, worked as a caseworker in Chicago and as a reference librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. In 2006, Trueblood’s first novel, Seven Loves, came out from Little Brown and was a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers”. Her latest collection of stories, Marry or Burn, has been shortlisted for the 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. She lives in Seattle and the Methow Valley. “Trueblood has earned a place next to Alice Munro on my shelf of fiction” - Alicia Ostriker
Nuala Ní Chonchúir lives in County Galway. Her début novel You was published by New Island in 2010; it was called ‘a heart-warmer’ by The Irish Times; The Irish Examiner said it was ‘a gem’; The Irish Independent, ‘a must read’. Her third short fiction collection Nude was published in 2009; The Irish Times called it ‘a memorable achievement’. Nude was shortlisted for the 2010 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Nuala's third poetry collection The Juno Charm is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in 2011. She is working on another novel.
Ethel Rohan and Alison MacLeod Reading
Friday, 16 September at 4pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Ethel Rohan is the author of Hard to Say (PANK, 2011) and Cut Through the Bone, (Dark Sky Books, 2010), the latter named a 2010 Notable Story Collection by The Story Prize. Her work has or will appear in The Good Men Project, The Chattahoochee Review, Los Angeles Review, Potomac Review and Southeast Review Online, among many others. She earned her MFA in fiction from Mills College, California. Raised in Dublin, Ireland, Ethel Rohan now lives in San Francisco, California. Visit her at ethelrohan.com.
RTÉ Francis MacManus Award reading
Friday, 16 September at 5pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
The RTE Radio 1 Short Story Competition was founded in memory of Francis MacManus, the Kilkenny born novelist, biographer and former Head of Talks and Features at Radio Éireann. Over the past 25 years the competition has proved to be a launching pad for several new and emerging Irish writers and continues to offer a platform for the best of contemporary fiction. In 2011 First Prize was won by Washington DC-based Austin Duffy. His story “Orca” will be read by the actor Diarmuid Murtagh who graced our screens earlier this year on the TV blockbuster Camelot. Second Prize was won by Patrick Griffin from Kilkenny City for his story “Platform 17 – Grand Central Station”. Patrick’s story will be read by the actor and cabaret artiste Susan Zelouf. Third Prize was won by Andrew Fox from Skerries, Co. Dublin for his story “Seven Steps Home”. Andrew’s story will be read by Cork actor David Coakley who graced our screens earlier this year on the TV blockbuster Camelot.
Reading with Siobhan Fallon & Michal Ajvaz
Friday, 16 September at 7.30 pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Siobhan Fallon lived at Fort Hood while her husband was deployed to Iraq for two tours of duty. She earned her MFA at the New School in New York City and now lives with her family near the American Embassy in Amman, Jordan. You Know When the Men Are Gone is her first book. “Siobhan Fallon tells gripping, straight-up, no-nonsense stories about American soldiers and their families. It’s clear from her tender yet tough-minded first book, You Know When the Men Are Gone, that she knows this world very well. The reader need not look at Ms. Fallon’s biography to guess that she, like her book’s characters, has spent time living in Fort Hood, Tex., watching the effects of soldiers’ leave-takings and homecomings on men and the wives they leave behind. Married to a man who is on at least his third tour of duty, Ms. Fallon now lives where he is stationed, in the Middle East.” - The New York Times
Michal Ajvaz, poet, fiction writer, and essayist, was born in Prague in1949. Between ‘67–’74 he read Czech and aesthetics at Prague University. He did various menial jobs including work as a janitor, a night-watchman in a garage and a pump attendant for the Prague Waterworks. Since 1994 he has worked as a full-time writer. He lives in Prague. His novel Empty Streets was awarded the Jaroslav Seifert Prize in 2005, the most prestigious literary award in the Czech Republic. Two other novels The Other City (1993) and The Golden Age (2001) are available in English translation from Dalkey Archive Press. The English translation of The Golden Age was listed as Amazon’s No 1 Science Fiction novel for 2010.
Shortlistees Reading with Yiyun Li & Valerie Trueblood
Friday, 16 September at 9pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel,
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Yiyun Li is the author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl. A native of Beijing and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she was the recipient of the inaugural Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the Whiting Writers’ Award, and the Guardian First Book Award. She teaches writing at the University of California, Davis, and lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their two sons.
Valerie Trueblood grew up in rural Virginia, USA, studied with John Hawkes and John Berryman, worked as a caseworker in Chicago and as a reference librarian at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. In 2006, Trueblood’s first novel, Seven Loves, came out from Little Brown and was a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers”. She lives in Seattle and the Methow Valley. “Trueblood has earned a place next to Alice Munro on my shelf of fiction” - Alicia Ostriker
SATURDAY
Prizewinners' Reading
Saturday, 17 September at 12 noon
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
The winner of this year’s O’Faolain Prize is unknown until the festival begins but the winner of the Hennessy Emerging Fiction Award is Eileen Casey. Her fiction has also received The Maria Edgeworth Award, Listowel Writers’ Week Short Fiction Prize and The Cecil Day Lewis Award. To date, her stories have been published in the Moth, Verbal Arts Magazine and the Sunday Tribune, among others.
Anthologies Discussion
Saturday, 17 September at 2.30 PM. The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork.
Free event, all welcome. No booking required.
A panel discussion on the state of the short story and the publication of anthologies to promote the form.
Stinging Fly Showcase Reading with Mary Costello & Kathleen Murray
Saturday, 17 September at 4pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Mary Costello, originally from Galway, lives in Dublin. Her stories have been anthologised and published in New Irish Writing and in The Stinging Fly, most recently in the Spring 2011 edition. She was shortlisted for a Hennessy Award, and in spring 2010 was a finalist in the Narrative Short Story Competition in the U.S. She received an Arts Council bursary in 2011. A collection of her stories will be published by The Stinging Fly Press in early 2012.
Reading with Glenn Patterson & Eoin McNamee
Saturday, 17 September at 7.30pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Glenn Patterson was born, and lives, in Belfast. He is the author of seven novels: Burning Your Own (1988), Fat Lad (1992), Black Night at Big Thunder Mountain (1995), The International (1999), Number 5 (2003), That Which Was (2004), and The Third Party (2007). His non-fiction works are Lapsed Protestant (2006), and Once Upon a Hill: Love in Troubled Times (2009). A new novel The Mill for Grinding Old People Young will be published by Faber next year.
Eoin McNamee was born in Kilkeel, Co Down in 1961. His novels include Resurrection Man, The Blue Tango and 12 23. His latest novel is Orchid Blue, based on the execution of Robert McGladdery for the murder of Pearl Gamble.
“It is this sense of how the defining moments come to be agreed – of how they are essentially defined by the ruling class – that illuminates Orchid Blue, so that what begins as a crime thriller gradually builds not only into a political novel of the highest order but also that rare phenomenon, a genuinely tragic work of art.”
-John Burnside The Guardian
Shortlistee Reading with Edna O'Brien & Colm Tóibín
Saturday, 17 September at 9pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
Since her debut novel The Country Girls Edna O’Brien has written over twenty works of fiction along with a biography of James Joyce and Lord Byron. She is the recipient of many awards including the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, the American National Art’s Gold Medal and the Ulysses Medal. Born and raised in Co. Clare she has lived in London for many years.
Colm Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in 1955. He studied at University College Dublin and lived in Barcelona between 1975 and 1978. Out of his experience in Barcelona he produced two books, the novel The South (shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and winner of the Irish Times/ Aer Lingus First Fiction Award) and Homage to Barcelona, both published in 1990. He is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. In 2006 he was appointed to the Arts Council in Ireland. He is currently Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University. Among his other novels are The Master and The Heather Blazing. He has published two short story collections, Mothers and Sons (2006, winner of the Edge Hill Prize) and The Empty Family (2010).
SUNDAY
Frank O'Connor Literary Walking Tour
Sunday, 18 September, 12 noon
Meet at The Munster Literature Centre, 84 Douglas St.
Free event, all welcome. No booking required.
Frank O'Connor biographer Jim McKeown will conduct the tour, which meets outside the Munster Literature Centre, 84 Douglas Street, Cork. The building that now houses the Munster Literature Centre offices was O'Connor's birthplace.
Awards Presentations: Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award & Seán Ó Faoláín Prize
Sunday, 18 September at 7pm
The Ballroom, Metropole Hotel, Cork
Free event, all welcome. No booking necessary.
ABOUT THE AWARD
The 2011 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize is worth €35,000 to the winning author of a collection of short stories published for the first time, in English, anywhere in the world.
This prestigious international short story award in the memory of Frank O’Connor is the single biggest prize in the world for a collection of short stories. In honouring Cork’s literary genius and its most famous short story writer, it is hoped this award will achieve international recognition for the short story and highlight Cork’s important contribution to this literary art form.
This major international prize celebrating the city’s intimate relationship with the short story was established as part of the literary programme of Cork’s tenure as European Capital of Culture. Since then it has made possible through the generous support of Cork City Council.
In 2002, the Munster Literature Centre introduced the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize, an annual short story competition dedicated to one of Ireland's most accomplished story writers and theorists. This too is presented during the FOC festival. This year's judge is poet, novelist & playwright Ian Wild.
