ABROAD WRITERS’ CONFERENCE

Lismore Castle, Ireland, December 9-16, 2013

Short Short Story Contest

Judge: ROBERT OLEN BUTLER, Pulitzer Prize Winner & F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature

Three Winning Stories will be published in the February 2014 issue of

Stinging Fly Magazine

How deep can you dive into your imagination? How breathless can you make readers feel? How brief can you make your best stories? Dazzle us with your brilliant brevity and you might just win a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience during that magical month of December with Abroad Writers’ Conference at Ireland’s historic and awe-inspiring Lismore Castle in County Waterford.

In 500 words or less write a standout story that seduces us, sings to us, shakes us, grabs us by the throat, or that’s so quiet we have to strain to hear. Any subject and any genre, but whatever you do be interesting and make us care. Take the leap, you just might be about to lose and re-find yourself inside a twelfth-century castle in picturesque, hospitable, and literary-loaded Ireland.

1st Prize: Free Admission to award-winning author Ethel Rohan’s 3 Day “Brilliance of Brevity” Workshop* & a Celebratory Lunch with Contest Judge, Robert Olen Butler

2nd Prize: A scrumptious full banquet dinner at Lismore Castle with conference luminaries: Robert Olen Butler, Karen Joy Fowler, Sarah Gristwood, Mariel Hemingway, Edward Humes, Claire Keegan, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Anne Perry, Michelle Roberts, Ethel Rohan, Alex Shoumatoff, Patricia Smith, Jane Smiley, and Lily Tuck.

3rd Prize: A complimentary pass of your choice to any one of our many exciting conference events at Lismore Castle.

• Entries Accepted June 1st through July 15th, 2013

• Winners Announced August 15th, 2013

• $10 Entry Fee: https://abroadwritersconference.submittable.com/submit

• For Full Contest Details Visit: http://www.abroadwritersconference.com

• For Full Conference Details & Registration Visit: http://www.abroad-crwf.com

*A $500 value to be used in full payment for Ethel Rohan’s “Brilliance of Brevity” 3 day/15 hr. workshop or can be applied as a $500 discount toward a conference package purchase.

ABROAD WRITERS’ CONFERENCE

Lismore Castle, Ireland, December 9-16, 2013

Short Short Story Contest

Judge: ROBERT OLEN BUTLER, Pulitzer Prize Winner & F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature

Three Winning Stories will be published in the February 2014 issue of

Stinging Fly Magazine

How deep can you dive into your imagination? How breathless can you make readers feel? How brief can you make your best stories? Dazzle us with your brilliant brevity and you might just win a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience during that magical month of December with Abroad Writers’ Conference at Ireland’s historic and awe-inspiring Lismore Castle in County Waterford.

In 500 words or less write a standout story that seduces us, sings to us, shakes us, grabs us by the throat, or that’s so quiet we have to strain to hear. Any subject and any genre, but whatever you do be interesting and make us care. Take the leap, you just might be about to lose and re-find yourself inside a twelfth-century castle in picturesque, hospitable, and literary-loaded Ireland.

1st Prize: Free Admission to award-winning author Ethel Rohan’s 3 Day “Brilliance of Brevity” Workshop* & a Celebratory Lunch with Contest Judge, Robert Olen Butler

2nd Prize: A scrumptious full banquet dinner at Lismore Castle with conference luminaries: Robert Olen Butler, Karen Joy Fowler, Sarah Gristwood, Mariel Hemingway, Edward Humes, Claire Keegan, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Anne Perry, Michelle Roberts, Ethel Rohan, Alex Shoumatoff, Patricia Smith, Jane Smiley, and Lily Tuck.

3rd Prize: A complimentary pass of your choice to any one of our many exciting conference events at Lismore Castle.

• Entries Accepted June 1st through July 15th, 2013

• Winners Announced August 15th, 2013

• $10 Entry Fee: https://abroadwritersconference.submittable.com/submit

• For Full Contest Details Visit: http://www.abroadwritersconference.com

• For Full Conference Details & Registration Visit: http://www.abroad-crwf.com

*A $500 value to be used in full payment for Ethel Rohan’s “Brilliance of Brevity” 3 day/15 hr. workshop or can be applied as a $500 discount toward a conference package purchase.

I learned several weeks ago, while in NYC, standing in line to visit the 9/11 Memorial, that I had won the Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award, a prize hailed as “one of Ireland’s most prestigious awards for the single short story.” I felt winces of guilt–celebrating amidst the shadow of death and the 9/11 Memorial, but I couldn’t help my excitement and the leap of my insides.

Shortly after my return from NYC to San Francisco, I booked my flights to attend the Listowel Festival to accept my prize in person (approx. $2,600) and to read my winning story. However, my mother passed away on April 11th and I had to phone the airlines and ask them to change my itinerary, bringing my travel forward and allowing me fly home for my mother’s funeral. The expense aside, I did not have the energy or heart to return to Ireland again this month for the Festival–even though I very much wanted to be there.

The award remained confidential until last night, when it was at last announced at the opening ceremony of Listowel Writers’ Week. During the ceremony, I received the most surprising and touching of emails–from someone I had met for the first time in Dublin the day after we buried our mother. In his email, he said he was standing inside the Listowel Arms Hotel, amidst the applause for my “great win.” He also said that he had no doubt my departed mother was also sharing in the joy. I really like to believe that. That my mother’s spirit continues, whole and well, and that at long last she can be the kind of mother she always wanted to be. I can see her nod and smile, her eyes alight and her face full with pride, just as I see in this win my mother country nod and smile, telling me to keep on. And it feels like grace, like I can breathe better.

Ethel Rohan knows how to startle the dark. Her compassionate intensity illuminates the prose and the people of Goodnight Nobody—thirty short stories that are as sharp as they are earnest, luminous stories that reflect with sparse elegance our humanity and our often brokenness. As the moon circles the Earth, always separate but always drawn near, so too the cratered, alienated characters of Goodnight Nobody orbit others, striving to connect. By turns heartwarming and heartrending, this collection constellates ordinary lives gone wrong—the disgraced Dublin Reservist; the wife jealous of bees; the pyromaniacal mother craving warmth; the one-armed identical twin facing incompleteness; the photographer striving for the perfect image before losing her sight; and a host of others in trouble. Lives gone wrong, but always trying to get right.

PRAISE for Goodnight Nobody:

“In Ethel Rohan’s Goodnight Nobody, while breaking into her own home, a young woman unknowingly slices open her arm. This image is quintessential Rohan—characters trying, and often failing, to gain access to both safety and family, rendered with prose so swift, eviscerating, and brilliant that readers don’t realize they too have been opened up. Rohan elegantly weaves tattooed women, Irish Army reservists, identical twins, a missing monkey, traumatized girl scouts and more, into a world we all recognize, fear, and can’t help but love.”

—SIOBHAN FALLON, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone

“Fans of Ethel Rohan’s writing will find, in her latest and outstanding collection, Goodnight Nobody, a writer who has never been more intelligent, more graceful, more moving. Whether it’s a young girl torn between a loving father and an abusive mother, or a photographer who is losing her eyesight while her husband bears witness, or a woman who wants nothing more than a sign from her husband that he sees her, Rohan writes about people searching for a place to belong or a place to breathe or simply, a place to be. In Rohan’s eminently capable hands and words, these stories give us that hope that these searching people she writes will find everything they want or need.”

—ROXANE GAY, author of An Untamed State and Bad Feminist

“Ethel Rohan speaks in many voices, all of which need to be heard. She goes so deeply into the hearts and souls of her people. And she wounds, she heals, often in the same sentence. Plain and simple, Goodnight Nobody is a great and unique collection of stories.”

—PETER ORNER, author of Love and Shame and Love

“Early in Ethel Rohan’s arresting collection, Goodnight Nobody, we encounter a character staining glass, ‘playing with light and dark and crooked and jagged, wanting the window to finish misshapen and almost frightening, gorgeous on the edge of grotesque.’ I couldn’t help but conjure that artist and her approach to her work as I simultaneously devoured and savored this book of beautiful and breathtaking stories. Each gem-like piece is capable of dazzling you, but these stories might cut you, too. They will without a doubt leave you unsettled.”

—CHAD SIMPSON, author of Tell Everyone I Said Hi

Further to my review of Brian Sousa’s story collection, Almost Gone, at Necessary Fiction, I have an immaculate copy of same book to give away. Just head over to Necessary Fiction, leave your name and a way to contact you in the comments and I’ll draw the winner and mail you the book the next day. Open to everyone everywhere. Ends Midnight, PST, May 8.

You’re welcome.

My mother, Kathleen, passed away on April 11th and I returned last night from Ireland and her funeral services. I feel wrecked in many ways.

In the end, just some seventy-odd pounds and completely erased by Alzheimer’s, I’ve expected her death for years, but she defied leaving this world so many times and now that she’s actually gone I can’t quite believe it’s happened.

It may be wrong of me to say that we had almost been expecting her death since she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s all those years ago. But we were. If you know someone who has suffered from this disease, you will understand what I am talking about. I do have to say though, her funeral service was lovely. In fact, I don’t think I have seen a service as nice as this before, although, I may be biased. Before her diagnosis, she had mentioned something about final expense life insurance, and how this policy can help to cover any costs associated with the funeral so that your family don’t have that burden. It was a great idea when she said about it, and I’ve got a funny feeling that she went through with this. Good for her. She had the send-off she deserved, so be sure to look at different companies to compare policies and prices if this is something that appeals to you. Even after this amazing service, you get brought back down to earth and you realize that she has indeed left us.

As hard as the flight from San Francisco to Dublin was on April 11th, knowing that she was already dead and that I wasn’t with her in the end, the flight back to San Francisco yesterday was almost unbearable. I kept thinking of that flight I made over twenty years ago as an immigrant, when it was me leaving my mother and not the other way around, and her face at Dublin Airport, twisted and tear-stained, her chin trembling, all in a way I’d never seen her cry before.

I have two sisters and three brothers. The six of us carried our mother’s coffin on our shoulders into the church and carried her out again to her final resting place. That act of carrying her, of raising her up, gave me such comfort. At long last, she is at rest. Her suffering is over. I forgive her everything just as I know she forgives me everything.

I placed a short letter in the coffin with her, right before the undertakers placed the lid on her for the final time. I wanted her to go with a tiny piece of my writing. She is also gone with a piece of my heart.

I’m teaching a three-hour intensive on the short-short story this Saturday at Book Passage, Corte Madera. The class is limited to 10 and I believe there are now only 3 spots available. Won’t you join me? You can register here.

“Flash” fiction centers on the art of compression and the brilliance of brevity. To inspire and enliven us, we will read and briefly discuss a sampling of excellent, inventive short-short stories from Mary Miller, Myfanwy Collins, Kathy Fish, Joe Kapitan, and more. The main focus of the workshop will be on your writing and we will work from prompts to generate ideas, encourage risk, and bring forth trouble (only trouble is interesting). Our goal is to enjoy our group’s collective charge and to produce a first draft of tiny but meaningful narratives.

I’m not a fan of the term “Flash Fiction” and worry it gives credence to the idea of short-short stories being fast, easy, and lazy writing. Stories, done right and well, are stories. Amen.

gave an astonishing amount of time and love to my work, in particular my story collection, Cut Through the Bone. I would be so grateful if you took the time to visit Mel’s website The Reading Life which is dedicated to writers and their works, in particular Irish writers. Mel’s selfless dedication to writing and books is truly impressive and laudable. Thank you, Mel.

My thanks to Kate Brown, Fiction Editor, The Front View, for including my short-short story, “The Care of Babes”.

Most of my stories have betrayal as their subtext, but I believe this is the first time I’ve ever overtly written about infidelity.

Now I’m going to go eat a plum.

Christopher Allen, curator of I Must Be Off!, a website dedicated to interviews with expats, kindly featured me here.

An excerpt:

“As a child I struggled with learning differences and for years attended what in Dublin we called “remedial classes” taught by an elderly nun, Sister Gerethie. Luckily, despite Sister Gerethie’s hunchback, walking cane, and black garb, she didn’t succumb to the stereotype and I remember her fondly. My challenges to read and write were never diagnosed, that I know of, and to this day I’m not sure if my difficulties were cognitive or emotional (I’m a survivor of childhood abuse). The memory of the struggle, though, remains like a bird on my shoulder that every now and again pecks at me. On one hand, I’m proud and frankly astonished that I’ve grown from that girl who jumbled text to, of all things, a writer, and on the other hand the insecurities around feeling stupid still burn and I worry that, as a writer, I couldn’t possibly be in the right place.”

Thanks, Chris, for including me.