Category: Writer Interview

Short story collection, Writer Interview, Writers Chat, Writers Read, Writing Life

Writers Chat 69: Mary O’Donoghue on “The Hour After Happy Hour” (The Stinging Fly: Dublin, 2023)

Mary, you are very welcome to my Writers Chat series. We’re here to discuss your short story collection The Hour After Happy Hour, a collection which has been described (rightly!) by Mike McCormack as “Measured and ceaselessly inventive.”

Cover image of The Hour After Happy Hour showing the title and author name in white writing with an illustration (of women) in shades of blue. Courtesy of The Stinging Fly.

SG: You’ve stated on Arena that The Hour After Happy Hour took ten years to write and in The Irish Times that “The book moves through waiting places and limbo states, very often situated in emigration and transit.” Can you talk about what the act of writing means to you – do you think it is in and of itself a limbo state?

MOD: Thank you for hosting me as part of your series, Shauna. I’m pleased to be in conversation with you. Yes, the stories in the book travel the course of ten years, during which time I, a Clarewoman, have lived and worked in both the southeast and northeast of the United States. The oldest story in the book is “The Sweet Forbearance in the Streets,” written in 2013; the youngest story is the closing story, “The Rakes of Mallow,” written in the early weeks of 2023. So, a decade’s worth of work. Your question accurately captures the act of writing as a limbo state. If we factor in waiting to state of limbo, then so much of writing is waiting. Waiting for a form, a voice, an image upon which the mechanism of a story, or indeed a poem, might turn. Writing might also be considered a liminal condition: transition or threshold. And honest process demands that the writer succumb to change and crossing over.

SG: Oh that’s a wonderful way into process… waiting, and then succumbing to change and crossing over. The opening and concluding stories, both titled “The Rakes of Mallow,” I thought, were brilliant. To me it felt like you distilled the essence of the emigrant experience through the lens of gender. Could you comment on this? 

MOD: The opening story “The Rakes of Mallow” was written in 2015. Not until much later did I realise I had some unfinished business with that story! In the first version I wanted to explore a small and collective emigrant experience: shared disappointments and sorrows, defiant efforts to ‘work one’s way back in’ to the country of origin, which is very clearly Ireland. The story takes its title from the 18th century song (which has had a 20th century life). In the song those rakes know themselves for “Beauing, belling, dancing, drinking/ Breaking windows, cursing, sinking.” And that “sinking” crystallized the first “Rakes” story for me: disobedient, disarrayed, disappointed Irish emigrants who were surely male and “still for Mallow waters crying.” Ten years on I wrote the story anew, this time from the perspective of women and women-identified emigrants. The second “Rakes” is more widely choral, non-protagonist centred, and in solidarity with other emigrants who are not necessarily Irish. And perhaps the biggest difference of all is that the second “Rakes” are more defiant. They decide not to go home. They come close, but they don’t give in. They will not give up their independence. I’m fond—differently fond–of both branches of the “Rakes” family.

SG: Thanks for such insight, Mary. And through the “Rakes” family you also capture the push-pull of belonging and the outsider. In “At the Super 7” – possibly my favourite story in the collection – you capture a wonderful sense of both loneliness and despair with an uncomfortable undertone. Identity, it would seem, is given by virtue of being a father, an identity which the protagonist holds onto dearly. When this is gradually eroded, he is unable to read signs, or accept his new (or non?) place in his son’s life.

“Anger teemed through him. A gale of hurt and dread.”

The lack of drama only serves to build on this anger and yet there is such sadness in the story. Can you talk about that see-saw of emotions?

MOD: I’m glad you like this story. It surfaced one evening in Boston as I walked past a hotel I’d been walking past for many years, seeing the same doorman through those years. The hotel is near a train station. I imagined this doorman taking a train as part of being in a new relationship. Those elements in play, I began to explore what a close but intense brush with parenthood might mean to him. I’m interested in parental roles that include step-parenting (I’m a stepmother), guardianship, proxy parenting. The protagonist of “At the Super 7” is ardent in his guardianship of his girlfriend’s son; he is proud of what this new role has afforded him. When his chance at that other life is ‘eroded’—I like your word here—he wishes to persist in that guardian role, and goes to extremes, and wilfully misses his ex-girlfriend’s cues and requests. I find him fueled more by love than anger. His drive from Boston to Florida is an extravagantly long, sad gesture that’s also beautiful in its commitment. Following him on those journeys allowed me to rest the fiction awhile in places I find enchanting for their melancholy: the motels, small towns, and flashy beaches he comes to know all too well over the course of his campaign to remain relevant in the boy’s life.

SG: That’s what really struck me – he is fueled more by love than anger, contrary to what we might assume of a male protagonist. Many of the characters in the collection are seeking something; many don’t know what it is that they seek. I felt that the placement of “Mavis-de-Fleur” next to “At the Super 7” made these two stories talk to each other about what it means to parent, to love, the need we have to be constantly seeking, and the sense of a widening disconnection. Can you talk about these themes?

MOD: I’m interested to hear that you found symmetry between “Mavis-de-Fleur” and “At the Super 7.” It’s not something I noticed as I placed those stories in close proximity. Now that I’m attending to what you’ve noticed, I recognise that they do share a tone, a tone that combines defiance and lonesomeness. The collection as a whole is certainly interested in failed connections—or connections that have simply grown up or given up over time. All fiction might be said to work from within the emotional breach of what is quickly said and what is truly felt. It’s a tremulous balance, and perhaps we find it especially familiar in the twenty-first century. “Mavis-de-Fleur” is my underworld story. In November 2023 I dedicated a reading of the story to my friend David Ferry, the great poet and translator who had recently died at the age of ninety-nine. I referred to having spent a lot of time “among the shades” with David (he translated the Aeneid and Gilgamesh and more). Even the shades are supplicating to be heard and known.

SG: “All fiction might be said to work from within the emotional breach of what is quickly said and what is truly felt.” Beautiful! One of the pleasures in reading this collection is your descriptive and precise language. You create a clear sense of place as well as capturing how your characters are in the given spaces – “Late Style” and “Maenads in the Terminal” are great examples, with the later bringing a wicked humour rooted in reality:

“I had passed through security in hotshot style, lights popping and voices raised high as weapons. I wore zipless, unriveted garments, and a pad that if soaked through in an hour I was to call an emergency.”

Can you comment on your writing process in relation to precise language, for example, adding in details as you edit? Using notes from notebooks?

MOD: Aren’t you’re mischievous to quote that passage from “Maenads in the Terminal”! Well, I work for accuracy—which often means not giving a damn about the proprieties. Let’s just say that that is not the only soaked pad in the collection! Accuracy is a slow, accretive process in my writing. I suspect that the word ‘unriveted’ came early in the making of that sentence; I know I was thinking about metal fixtures setting off security alarms. Maybe Erica Jong came whispering with ‘zipless.’ Thereafter the work lay in building around those words, building a stance, a condition, a psychology, and a grammar. The punctuation of ‘a pad that if soaked through in an hour I was to call an emergency’ is correct, but it makes for an intentionally bumpy reading experience. I’m devoted to grammar and all it can offer a fiction writer. I value punctuation for many of my efforts at precision. Thereafter it’s about layering version upon version upon version of a sentence, until the sentence becomes incontrovertibly itself.

SG: I’m being mischievous while also identifying! I love your explanation of your work building in, on, and around words and layering multiple versions of sentences until each one “becomes incontrovertibly itself”. A broad print for excellent writing.

Well, we will end this chat, Mary, with some short questions:

  • Bus or train? Train for the rakes and the reading. Bus for seeing a city above its subway innards.
  • Fabulous answer! Coffee or tea? Coffee: espresso and steamed milk. (Milk: whole fat.)
  • Quiet or noise when you’re writing? Some background noise when writing; quiet when revising and editing.
  • Your favourite character in The Hour After Happy Hour? A critic once said the only way they could fault Peter Carey was for loving his characters too much. My form might be a little too ruthless to have favourites. But a minor character like Rascal the dog in “S’addipana”—né Raskolnikov—I’m drawn to his simple striving “to find the last flea,” and because he “fails.”
  • What’s the next three books on your reading pile? El Llano in Flames (1950s) by Juan Rulfo, My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley and A Shock by Keith Ridgway (one for rereading).

Thank you Mary for such insightful glimpses into your craft and congratulations again on a superb collection.

Mary will be running a seminar on Tuesday, 13th February 2024 entitled “Writing and Re-Vision” as part of The Stinging Fly Seminar Series. See here for details.

Photograph of Mary O’Donoghue courtesy of The Stinging Fly, July 2023

Thank you to The Stinging Fly for the Advance Copy of The Hour After Happy Hour and to Peter O’Connell Media for introducing me to Mary.

Order The Hour After Happy Hour here.

Writer Interview, Writers Chat

Writers Chat 66: Alison Wells on “Random Acts of Optimism” (wordsonthestreet: Galway, 2023)

Cover of Random Acts of Optimism showing painting of a desert landscape with a ticking clock in the foreground and a red-leaved tree with a woman’s face peering at the clock. Image by Beatrice Mecking, courtesy of wordsonthestreet.

Alison, You are very welcome to my Writers Chat series. We’re here to discuss your short story collection Random Acts of Optimism which has been described by Billy O’Callaghan as “a genuinely marvellous collection”. Published by Galway based wordsonthestreet, it was launched in dlr Lexicon on September 20th. Many congratulations.

SG: Let’s begin with the title Random Acts of Optimism, which is a theme that runs through each story – despite the diverse forms within the collection – and, in my experience, optimism is the feeling with which are left with when we’ve read each story. Can you talk about how you came to decide on this title?

AW: When I came to write the title story I recognised that for Cynthia and Tom and for many of the other characters in my stories they were often taking action in spite of or in defiance of the constraints of their circumstances. The acts of optimism we take in our lives can run from stand out courageous acts to the everyday doggedness that so many people display as they push through difficult periods of life, as losses mount up over time or as we all faced during the pandemic years. Personally, I am also fascinated by psychology and how we convince ourselves of things, we can be courageously optimistic but sometimes optimism becomes delusion and that has been the subject of several of my novels as well as the stories in the book. For me, also, Random Acts of Optimism also relates to my own long journey as a writer, and also for every writer, trying to find the right words, reach people and hopefully get published. I’ve explored these themes in my writing blog Head above Water and hope to work with people to support them to maintain optimism in their writing lives.

SG: That’s very moving – working to help people maintain optimism in their writing lives. Something so very much needed. I really loved the opening title story – the characters, the narrative but also how you used the page to communicate some of the clinical ways our society was run during the Covid-19 Pandemic. It’s a heart warming story of connection blooming in adverse conditions. In particular the use of humour to fill communication gaps:

He doesn’t know what else to say so he tells her about a woman who returned a book two years too late. The book was called Successful Time Management for Dummies.

Can you talk about the origins and writing of this story?

AW: This story was rooted in my real experiences of the surreal and poignant experience of being one of a few library staff members sending books out to ‘cocooners’ during the Covid19 pandemic from a vast empty library. (The Lexicon library, currently the largest library in Ireland). Many conversations were stark but often a joke was shared and the topic of books always engaged and entertained us.

I also wanted to explore how a male character who is bewildered by his marriage breakup and fallen prey to the anxieties of the modern world  and not really able to make sense of it might begin to find answers through his unlikely connection with an older lady through the libraries and through books themselves. I’ve written (a yet unpublished novel) about a man who loses his way in life but in that case does not find a path back.

I still feel very moved when I think about the “cocooners” at home under often very lonely and vulnerable circumstances. What happened in the pandemic underlines the importance of real human connection (which, by the way, is one of the positives of public libraries with their events, social groups and book clubs) and the power of books and writing to help us feel that connection, understand ourselves and others and just be plain entertained and carried away, even in dire circumstances.

I think writing this story, more than any, allowed me to really depict the stoicism, humour and camaraderie that so many ordinary people have while negotiating everyday challenges. I went on to write several thousand more words of the developing relationship between the characters, so we will see where that goes.

SG: Well that sounds very intriguing, Alison, I really liked those characters and would love to read more. In “There’s a Café in This Story”, you tell the tale of connections breaking down, the importance of place and how necessary it is to keep hope in relationships. I loved the entwining of the inner character with the exterior of the cafe:

There are details that build up over time, the first, shyly uncertain pleasantries, umbrellas under the table, ankles knocking against the metal legs and then against each other. He wonders…. Will the cafes all merge, with all their combined sensations of exhilaration and regret?

Tell me about the structure of this story and how it came about? 

AW: We can use signs around us as scaffolding to reinforce the stories we are telling ourselves. This man, captivated by the idea of this illicit romance, sees the scene and objects around him as part of a rarefied and lovely story. Meanwhile, for his wife, sitting under the infant at home, the discarded coffee cup, her own tea out of reach, the immutable reality of domesticity, objects give a different flavour. Working in Dun Laoghaire, I often walked out on the pier. The sound and scent of the sea, the clanging of the anchors, the gulls were all very vivid, sensation laden images which I used to set the scene and evoke that sense uplift and freedom that the man feels his rendezvous give him.

I liked juxtaposing the man’s reality, his illusion of freedom, movement and magic with the more solid reality of the woman’s life in the alongside their joint memories/experiences of the past. These conflicting juxtapositions are reflected in the images of the servers’ arms criss-crossing,  the struts of the bridge, reaching up to put the star on the Christmas tree.  I think the to-ing and fro-ing between the man and wife’s realities allow us to see two sides to the story.

SG: I liked how seeing the two sides worked. I’m curious as to the order of the collection. I liked how “Sad about the Plumber’s Uncle” worked next to “All that Thinking”, in that the light relief and humour in the first story sets the reader up for the deep thinking in the second. How did you settle on the order?
AW: As you say, the stories in the collection are quite diverse in tone and mood and also what you might call genre, running from realistic to more speculative and fantastical. And as you say, occasionally there was a pretty stark reversal of tone. In other cases, one humorous story follows another but then a reflective element to that story might be echoed in the next. There are some stories about writing or having written (told from the point of view of a letter) and they are close together. To me, the process was similar to the rightness of feeling I felt listening to my favourite albums in the 80s, an instinctive feeling towards tone, poignancy, energy and pause. Sometimes evenness of tone is preserved and at other times the symbols or drums break the preceding silence. I like how the first story throws you right in and how the last story refers to a moment of coming home.

SG: I loved your use of sensory detail and pause in “The Spaceman Has His Tea”. The story has a straight-forward premise yet you created a narrative that is, in its underbelly, a philosophical consideration of the nature of our existence.

Unleashed from the world is not to be free of it, it is to be put in charge of the last egg in the basket, it is to be six years old have your mother put the egg into your hand and say ‘Don’t break that.’ And the earth is as blue as a bird’s egg, as precious as Fabergé, as fragile as Arctic ice. It is to be six years old and afraid of forgetting.

I love that it also concerns the lovely act of drinking tea and “meringue, light, delicious; clouds dissolving on his tongue.” How important are the senses to you when you write?

AW: Like many writers, I’m always pained by the gap between the richness and impact of reality, especially that of the natural world and how well I am getting it down on the page. I can be carried away by ideas and competing narratives, but I think what short work can do best and what I would like my writing to develop into is being more spare, precise, immediate and evocative. The senses are key to that. I grew up in the countryside, was immersed in it, reeds, wind, frogspawn, moss. The natural world evokes a strong feeling and I hope I can put some of that across through different sense impression. Recently I read the writing of Darragh McKeown for the first time and loved the clarity of it. The key to writing is specificity, we know the world through everyday things, what they evoke through senses and memory, what they mean to us. 

We will end this chat, Alison, with some short questions:

  1. Beach or mountains? Beach by a small margin but I grew up in Kerry near the sea with a mountain at my back and now live in Wicklow which also has both!
  2. Dart, train or bus? Definitely DART these days though I spent my college years on the train between Dublin and Kerry leading to many fascinating glimpses of characters.
  3. Do you usually have one book or numerous books on the go? Both writing and reading wise, the answer to this is always many, no matter how much I fight against it. I am endlessly, pathologically curious. I read for my own pleasure, for research for both writing projects and, currently for my dissertation for an MSc in Library and Information Science, I am also fascinated by neuropsychology and creative resilience.
  4. I love the idea of being pathologically curious! Quiet or noise when you’re writing? Quiet. Not easy to find. I used to get up at 5am when the children were young and we built a writing cabin in the garden but once the world gets going, quiet is never easy to find and the noise in my head hard to dodge.
  5. What’s the next three books on your reading pile? I just went to check and counted 50 books stacked up beside the bed! One of the perils of being a public librarian is constant temptations. I am about to read Books on Fire – The Tumultuous Story of the World’s Great Libraries by Lucien x. Polastron, The Creativity Code – how AI is learning to write, paint and think. These will inform future writing projects. I also have Poetry Unbound – 50 Poems to Open Your World by Pádraig ó Tuama put by – his selection of poems and what they mean to him. Just now, with work, study, family life and book launches, this selection is something to steady me, give me pause and interest and settle me down in the moment.  

Thank you, Alison, for such a generous and open attitude to and answering of my questions. I wish you every success with Random Acts of Optimism.

Order Random Acts of Optimism here and follow Alison here.

Photograph of Alison Wells, blonde hair and blue eyes, smiling directly at the camera, wearing a denim-blue cardigan. Photo courtesy of Alison Wells.

Thank you to wordsonthestreet for the Advance Copy of Random Acts of Optimism.

Writer Interview, Writers Chat

Writers Chat 65: John MacKenna on “Absent Friend” (Harvest Press: Carlow, 2023)

Back and Front cover of “Absent Friend” showing pencil drawing of John MacKenna and Leonard Cohen. Cover image: Lucy Deegan

John, You’re very welcome to my Writers Chat series. We’re going to chat about your latest publication, Absent Friend (The Harvest Press: Carlow, 2023), a memoir and reflection on your friendship with Leonard Cohen. 

SG: Let’s start with the title. It both sums up the friendship now, and how it endures despite Leonard’s death, and also the friendship as it formed and evolved over geographical distance. Did the title come easy to you? 

JMacK: Thanks for the invitation. I’ve long been aware of the tradition in some religious communities of setting a place at table for absent friends – in fact it’s one we’ve adopted in our house. It’s a way of remembering those who are away from home and those who have died and it never fails to bring a moment or two of reflection on some or all of the missing people in our lives. So when I began writing this book the title, more or less, suggested itself. It seemed to sit very easily with what I had in mind as the theme of the book – the friendship and the absence of that friendship after Leonard died.

SG: That’s very moving – your writing as a table with a space for absent friends. It’s quite an incredible story, your lifelong communications with Leonard. How did you work out the structure for the memoir in terms of chronology of friendship/ your own chronological life? 

JMacK: That was a challenge. I had many thoughts on how to approach it but, in the end, I thought the songs are the binding force. The songs are what drew me to Leonard when I was eighteen and the songs remain after he’s gone. So I used the songs and albums as guideposts to the journey of his life and my life and our friendship. And it seemed to work. 

The parallels between events in my own living and the emotions and events gathered in his songs worked in tandem in terms of the writing.  There’s one moment in the book where I’m driving and listening to If It Be Your Will (a song about the holocaust) and I come upon a car accident and that produces its own small holocaust – that’s just one moment of the parallels being shocking. 

But the fact that Leonard was so open and so reflective of his own life – and by extension all our lives – makes the work incredibly accessible, moving, educational and emotionally connected.

SG: There were a few moments in the book where there were uncanny parallels and perhaps these actually connect to your own openness and reflection. You also capture the philosophy behind many of Cohen’s songs that have carried you through rough and tough times. You show us the power of his words and music. Why do you think he’s been painted so often as just writing about the underbelly of emotion? 

JMacK: I had one brother who was ten years older than me and he was a wonderful guide in life. Leonard was eighteen years older than me and I thought of him as a brother, too. So the guidance, the sharing of experience and direction were important to me. But Leonard’s life was radically different from mine – he came from a wealthy, Canadian, Jewish family. And, yet, much of what he wrote about in terms of emotion was blindingly familiar to me –  an innate darkness; a struggle with emotional intimacy; an interest in the spiritual. 

So, yes, he does write about that dark spaces and those muddy waters. What is sometimes forgotten is his wonderful humour – it was quiet but it was always there in his songs, in chatting with him, in his letters and emails. That’s something that is often missed about his personality. And sometimes his dismissal and the dismissal of his songs as razor blade music is just lazy journalism.

SG: And that’s a gift – being able to combine dark and deep spaces with humour. You write about your own relationship to form (books, songs, poetry) as well as the impact and/or influence of teaching (the system) on your creativity. The “links” that pull you in to Leonard’s work are also what work in writing:

an idea, an experience, a phrase, an image

To what extent did you learn or work on your writing craft through exploring Leonard’s songs? (For example, your novel Once We Sang Like Other Men)

JMacK: I first heard Leonard in 1971 when I was recovering from meningitis and I can still clearly remember the shock of hearing a story I was very familiar with (the Biblical story of Isaac) retold in the song Story of Isaac but hearing it told in the voice of a nine-year-old boy. The familiar became the fascinating. That was the first step on a writing road toward the realisation that old stories, familiar characters, well-worn situations can be viewed and re-told freshly. That was inspiring. 

The other thing I learned from Leonard’s work was that less is more – his ability to suggest things is powerful. There’s a line in a very late song about angels scratching at the door. That one verb is extraordinary in what it suggests and how it avoids the cliched. 

The subject matter of a lot of Leonard’s work is the spiritual and that’s an area that fascinates me and, as you say, I’ve examined it in Once We Sang Like Other Men and Joseph. It’s a road we were both interested in, that place where spiritual and human collide.

SG: Yes, that verb “scratching” alongside the softness (perceived) of angels is great. Absent Friend also serves as an exploration of religion. You speak about going to a monastery church in Moone, Kildare

in search of spiritual consolation and calmness

and at length about Leonard’s time in a monastery. How important was it to Leonard and how important is it to you in your writing?

JMacK: Leonard said the monastery at Mount Baldy and his times there saved his life. He went from absolute fame and an absolute dependence on alcohol to a time (six years) of reflection and removal from the demands of the world. It got him back on an even and healthy keel.

For me the quiet times spent at Bolton Abbey are important in two ways. They reconnect me with summers in my teenage years spent working in the gardens there – a wonderful time of ideas and debates and discussions and laughter with the monks. But they also connect me to a way of life that isn’t mine but one in which I recognise the importance of silence, of contemplation, of peace, of communal spirit. 

And that feeds into my writing. As I get older I find myself looking more and more (in fiction and non-fiction) at the place of the human in the world of the spiritual. Belief wise, I’d describe myself as an agnostic but I love the search, I love the things that are part of the monastic life – the internal and external landscapes in Bolton Abbey. And I get a tremendous reassurance and uplift from time spent there. The monks are good men, interesting, funny, they have a depth you don’t often find in the world. 

SG: How do you think you’ll carry Leonard’s legacy forward – in music and in writing – and do you see Absent Friend as part of this process? 

JMacK: I was honoured to work with Leonard on Between Your Love and Mine, a requiem for theatre that we completed in the summer before his death. That requiem has had two extremely successful tours – playing theatres across the country as well as the NCH and Aras an Uachtaráin. The requiem will be restaged next year to coincide with Leonard’s ninetieth birthday so that, I feel, is important. 

I hope Absent Friend contributes, in some small way, to spreading the word of Leonard’s genius as a wordsmith and musician.

SG: I am sure your book has already contributed – we see Leonard through the eyes of a friendship that endured a lifetime. I very much look forward to experiencing the requiem next year. So we’ll finish up, John, with some short questions:

  • Coffee or Tea? Coffee
  • Silence or music as you write – and if so, what music?  Music – I normally choose one CD to listen to per book – for Clare it was 19th century hymns but it could be anyone from Paul Simon to Mary Chapin Carpenter. Always there are words involved.
  • Longhand or laptop? Laptop – except for poems, they’re longhand
  • What are you reading now? Steeple Chasing by Peter Ross – a book on English churches!
  • What are you writing now? I’m redrafting a short novel set in my home village of Castledermot in the winters of 1963 and 2010 – the years of the big snows.
Photograph of John MacKenna wearing a white shirt, looking thoughtfully at the camera. Photo credit: Kevin Byrne used with permission

Thank you to The Harvest Press and John for the copy of Absent Friend. Purchase Absent Friend here.