Category: Uncategorized
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Burgundy, Bolero and Chicken Supreme
Miranda had agreed to come round to Declan’s for dinner because she couldn’t think of anything better to do. Miranda and Declan worked at the same school, she taught French and Home Economics, he taught Science and P.E. The staff room rap was that Declan was a bit of a sleaze and that he tried…
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The Big Book of Hope
I recently was invited to the launch of The Big Book of Hope in Dublin. The book was the brainchild of Hazel Larkin and was championed by Vanessa O’ Loughlin. Together they amassed a group of writers, public figures and celebrities who contributed fiction, memoir and non-fiction pieces to this large volume of 448 pages.…
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The Wobegone’s Slaughtered Dreams on Year Zero
I was recently asked by Marcella O’ Connor one of the fine writers in the Year Zero collective to submit a piece of flash to which she would add music and interpret the script in a video piece. It’s fascinating how such a treatment adds a layer of meaning to the piece and enhances it,…
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Buntyland
This is the text for a piece that I did on RTE (Irish National) Radio’s Sunday Miscellany Programme broadcast in May 2007 (There is a podcast for this somewhere..looking..) For the best part of five years in the glitzy 1980s our favourite game was Bunties. Whenever we got our hands on another issue of the…
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Just enough: Lorrie Moore and the power of description
Last night I started reading Lorrie Moore’s novel A Gate at the Stairs. I’m a fan of her short stories and am interested in seeing how her style pans out in a novel. Whereas I have always been an avid reader, now I can’t help but read and dissect a little as a writer, asking…
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Confessions of a guilty writing mum
I let my children sit in front of the telly during the holidays for great swathes of time (never did me any harm – in fact it taught me about narrative, character, humour). They concentrate on educational programmes like Horrible Histories (surrealism, history) and Greatest TV blunders (media awareness) and Come Dine with Me (wishful…
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Finding your keys: Creativity
I’ve written before about the process of incubation, about the subsconscious stewing and brewing. Writers recognise the feeling of tapping into the subconscious, the repository of half-formed ideas, distributed and layered memory. As we move through life we lay down the experience of millions of hours, thousands of millions of minutes of conscious experience, peripheral…
Alison Wells Author 