Stinging Fly Stories : Celebrating Our First 20 Years 1998-2018

Celebrating our first 20 years: 1998-2018

Edited by Declan Meade and Sarah Gilmartin, Stinging Fly Stories collects 40 short stories first published in the Stinging Fly magazine. It is a celebration of our first twenty years as a home for new writers and new writing, highlighting work by 40 different authors.

“The style and scope of the stories in this anthology are not easily categorised. Writers, both emerging and established, are always nudging at the form. Some tweak tradition, others aim to blast it apart. A good story creates a unique world that intrigues the reader from the outset. Éilis Ní Dhuibhne, a master of the form, sums it up as a space that is difficult to leave: ‘You don’t want the story to end. You love the texture of it, its language, its characters, what is happening in it. You enjoy exploring its depths, its layers, its everything. This is the most important aspect of the story: its being.’

The power of a short story lies in writing that makes fictional worlds read true, writing that creates intimacy between the reader and characters ‘living’ on the page. The stories in The Stinging Fly are about anything and everything. The ones that excel draw us fully into an experience, scratching away at the surface to explore what lies beneath.”

— Sarah Gilmartin

Stinging Fly Stories, by:

Colin Barrett
Kevin Barry
Sara Baume
Maria Behan
Claire-Louise Bennett
Jennifer Brady
Lucy Sweeney Byrne
Colin Corrigan
Mary Costello
Leona Lee Cully
Kevin Curran
Carys Davies
Danny Denton
Wendy Erskine
Oisín Fagan
Michael J. Farrell
Nicole Flattery
David Hayden
Desmond Hogan
Grace Jolliffe
Claire Keegan
Molly McCloskey
Lisa McInerney
Danielle McLaughlin
Martin Malone
Lia Mills
Sinéad Morrissey
Kathleen Murray
Michael Nolan
Philip Ó Ceallaigh
Nuala O’Connor
Mary O’Donoghue
Aiden O’Reilly
Sean O’Reilly
Nora Pyne
Deborah Rose Reeves
Keith Ridgway
Eimear Ryan
Cathy Sweeney
William Wall