23rd February, 2016

Jaki McCarrick in The Irish Times: the success of the Irish Short Story

Read Jaki McCarrick’s article in The Irish Times, where she asks: what is the story behind the success of the Irish Short Story?
Irish writers have excelled at the short story. But is it due, asks writer Jaki McCarrick, to the Irish oral tradition, Catholicism’s drama, an acute sense of place, an accident of history or because writing is the last free art?
Jaki’s critically acclaimed short story collection The Scattering was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize, 2014.
The Scattering is a collection of nineteen stories, many set on the Irish border, where this London-born author currently lives. These stories explore states of liminality: life on the Irish border, dual identities, emigration, being between states – certainty and doubt, codependency and freedom. Some explore themes of catastrophe and constraint. All explore what it means to be alive in a fraught and ever-changing world. This first collection from prizewinning author and playwright, Jaki McCarrick explores the dark side of human nature, often with a postmodern ‘Ulster gothic’ twist.