Loose Leaves SadbhBritish novelist and short story writer Toby Litt will be writer-in-residence for the week-long residential fiction workshop at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Co Monaghan.
The workshop is part of the forthcoming Davy Byrnes short story competition. While initial attention focused on the €20,000 Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award for best short story and the five runner-up prizes of €1,000 each, there are also eight places on this workshop for writers who have no novel or short story collection published and whose stories impress the judges.
Although well known for such novels as Corpsing and Finding Myself, Litt's publishing career began with the short story collection, Adventures in Capitalism, in 1996. In 2002, another collection, Exhibitionism, explored the boundaries of sex and sexuality. Litt studied creative writing at the University of East Anglia, where he was taught by Malcolm Bradbury. Last year he was among the Best Young British Novelists 2003, a list nominated once a decade by Granta magazine. As well as giving masterclasses at Annaghmakerrig, he will give personal tutorials to his eight students.
Asked by the James Joyce Centre, organiser of the competition, in association with The Irish Times and Rejoyce Dublin 2004, for his views on short stories as a genre, Litt gave this answer: "A short story can be anything - from V.S. Pritchett's 'glimpse in passing' to a densely plotted mini-saga, from a folk tale to an exquisitely crafted miniature. They have the great advantage of being an irresponsible form - they don't have to live up to poetry, and they don't have to perform all the wearisome duties of novels. They can be fantastically varied. They are one of the best ways in which prose writers can learn, about writing and about themselves."
Coincidentally one of the judges of the awards, Tobias Wolff, will be in Ireland next month to promote his new novel, Old School, shortly to be published by Bloomsbury.
Details of the short story competition (closing date for entries: February 2nd) from the James Joyce Centre, 35 North Great George's Street, Dublin 1, or at www.jamesjoyce.ie. E-mail: davybyrnes@jamesjoyce.ie
Tribute to an Irish champion
Tourists at the ancient monastic site of Clonmacnoise on December 27th were intrigued to see a crowd gathered at Templeconnor for a service. Poets Macdara Woods, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Ciaran O'Driscoll were among those who read and spoke at a memorial celebration conducted by Rev Graham Doyle in honour of the life and work of Irish writer and academic Paul Cahill, native of Rathdowney, Co Laois, who died aged 52 of a heart attack last summer at his home in Umbria, where he was buried.
A champion of Irish writing in Italy, he organised numerous conferences and readings there. Sadbh participated in one of them, 'Images of Ireland in Umbria', in Perugia in 1994. Recalling Cahill, who was his cousin, novelist James Ryan spoke of how a walk down Perugia's Corso Vanucci with him could take more than an hour (although it was less than half a mile long) as he greeted and was greeted by all who knew him.
"This was his court and for 30 years he wove his way through it like a benevolent Renaissance prince, spreading cheer, assuaging doubt, boosting confidence, deriding begrudgery, laughing - always laughing."
In his prose poem, 'Basil', Ciaran O'Driscoll conjured up "the dusty white roads of La Goga" leading to Cahill's home near Magione, where many Irish writers wrote and stayed over the years. A violin solo wafting across the Shannon on what was a gloriously sunny day ended proceedings. A fitting tribute in a fitting place.
Take a flutter on the dog
The category winners in the Whitbread literary awards, announced on Tuesday, hardly had time to crack open the champagne before a favourite emerged from the bookies. William Hill have already installed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (right) - a tale about an autistic boy's desire to find the killer of his neighbour's dog - as the 2/1 favourite to win the overall Whitbread Book of the Year prize on January 27th. And, as so often, the bookies may well be right.