From the X-case in 1992 to O’Connell Street 2016

by Ewa | 24 Sep 2016

Today Irish women march in Dublin to demand repeal of the 8th Amendment – in 1992, I reported from New York for Hot Press Magazine about the “X” case protests there – not much has changed.  Full text available later today.

Ferenji Cover and Launch Date

by Ewa | 30 Aug 2016

Here it is, my debut short fiction collection: Ferenji and other stories, published by Doire Press of Galway. Official publication date: 1st November, 2016.  But don’t miss the launch a little ahead of that on Thursday evening, 27 October at the Irish Writers’ Centre.

Ferenji is a themed collection of short stories set in Africa and Afghanistan, with six main characters mainly based in conflict or post-conflict zones.  It’s the fruit of meeting John Walsh and Lisa Frank of Doire Press, whose literary publishing house has been building up a rich reputation for publishing excellent new work from writers and poets for almost a decade now.

Doire’s first title was a debut poetry collection from Miceál Kearney titled Inheritance which won the North Beach Poetry Nights’ Grand Slam Prize. Their second was a short story collection by Susan Millar duMars, Lights in the Distance.  With the metamorphosis of the world of publishing from the category of innovative Arts champion to often corporate multi-national, Doire returns to the essential, the classic prototype of a quality literary pubishing house.

From years of being put off because all publishers wanted to know about was “my novel,” which I simply never wrote, Doire didn’t pester me for a novel.  They accepted that I write and love to write short stories. Currently, more than ever, it is a format that is favoured as a result of post-modern distraction and endless busy-ness. People like short stories because they are stories with characters and meaning and they are short.

My stories, in fairness, have been published fairly steadily down the years in anthologies, newspapers and magazines in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia and even Croatia.  My first, published by Cíarán Carty, was shortlisted for an Irish Hennessy Award and my debut in an anthology (Ireland in Exile by Dermot Bolger, New Island) was praised at the time and followed by about two dozen more published in other anthologies, magazines and newspapers. Another was nominated for the American Pushcart Prize, and a Manhattan dancer even created a contemporary dance piece inspired by it.

But the great novel eluded me.  Mostly, when I’d get through six chapters, I’d suddenly see a fantastic short story in the middle and open a new document to write that instead of knuckling down and starting Chapter 7.   But that’s the way, and I am so very happy to have met John Walsh and Lisa Frank, who also like short stories, and who liked mine enough to publish them.

Please join me on 27 October for the launch of my book at the Irish Writers’ Centre, and if you can’t – check out DoirePress.com and pick one up there!

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“Memory and Desire” launched in Dublin

by Ewa | 14 May 2016

Val Mulkerns reads from her new book, “Memory and Desire”.

Hard to believe that Val Mulkerns published her first novel in 1951. For this writer, in any case, as the niece in the background struggling with a first tome, she is an inspiration:  this is her tenth, sixty-five years later.

In between came two more novels, three short story collections, two children’s books and many thousands of words of journalistic work, as she became a columnist for a national newspaper in the seventies.

Standing at the podium in The Irish Writers’ Centre on Thursday night, she read an extract from the first story in the collection, “Special Category”, inspired by her father, Jimmy Mulkerns, who had been imprisoned in Frongoch prison camp (via Knutsford Jail) in 1916 following his participation in the Battle of the Four Courts.

As the kick-start to Memory and Desire” it certainly pulls the reader in.  Stories then follow in chronological fashion, actually drawing a rough line through most of Ireland in the twentieth century – from the birth of the nation through its massive changes in the sixties and seventies and then into the late eighties: an Ireland struggling between the disillusion of recession and emergence into a post-colonial identity.  The final, also the title story, has been described by Colm Tóibín as, “one of the finest short stories to have been published in Ireland for many years.”

While Val Mulkerns already has another book on the way – a memoir – it’s a great treat to see this new selection of her short stories available this year ahead of it:  for me, it was a wonderful re-introduction to her work, especially the short stories for which she is so renowned, and as it turns out, in my own case, put them between new covers with 451 Editions so that they can be read by others.  With its beautiful cover painting by Louise Newman, the book strikes a pose in bookshops, and presents a recurring theme in the collection: the sea.

The launch of “Memory and Desire”, which included fellow authors, literary friends and family as well as others drawn by the new title, was a splendid success.  Professor Ronan Conroy gave the best of introductions:  smart, witty and full of warmth, and the reading was delivered by the author herself with perfect pitch and timing, drawing in the audience until they hung on every word.

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HOT PRESS Profile by Anne Sexton

by Ewa | 10 Nov 2016

A piece in Hot Press magazine by Anne Sexton, with photo by Paula Nolan and review by Olaf Tyaransen. Below see an extract from the interview – the rest in Hot Press magazine, available in all Irish newsagents right now!

LIFE DURING WARTIME – INTERVIEW BY ANNE SEXTON 

An arts journalist and performer, Helena Mulkerns lived and worked in Paris and New York before joining the UN as a press officer. 

It was her ten years with UN peacekeeping missions that inspired her collection, Ferenji and other stories. Ferenji means ‘foreigner’ in old Arabic and Persian.  As the name suggests, Mulkerns’ stories centre on the lives of foreign aid workers in various conflict and post-conflict zones. (more…)

Leonard Cohen: He’s our man

by Ewa | 12 Nov 2016

This is my contribution to a piece by Martin Doyle with tributes from John Kelly, Sara Baume, Peter Murphy, Evelyn Conlon and more.  For all writers’ contributions, please click this link.

It wasn’t until the mid-nineties, a decade into the study of Tibetan Buddhism, that I began to listen to the music of Leonard Cohen. A beautiful Chinese artist friend would have no other soundtrack as she painted.  She said he transported her to a richer place than the blank, cold studio she was working in.  I only began to hear Cohen with her, then after she moved away I heard him more clearly by myself on a Buddhist retreat in Vermont.  Along pathways between pinewood trees and incensed shrine rooms, I played him constantly – in defiance of the strict rules of the monastery (no “entertainment”).  The experience was intensified by my fascination at Cohen himself having just retreated from the craziness of the music business to a Zen monastery in California.

Such respite from the turbulence and uncertainty of daily living in today’s world is always ephemeral.  Even Cohen came back into the spotlight when he began to tour again in recent years.  But his music is, in a way, is like a retreat.  It takes you out of the fray and into aural balm and wit and darkness that even while dark, is calming and sensual. (more…)