The best things I said about my book, I said at the beginning. My answers have thinned, the more I am asked about it. I have come to realise, the less you say, the more powerful you suggest you are. The other tactic I employ is evasion. To some questions I reply, That’s not for me to answer, because I want to be mysterious—as if the sound of the modern world is too loud for my sensitive soul, as if I am being awoken from an inner sanctum, interrupted from hushed communion with my creativi...| The Stinging Fly
February 2020. I’m in Rome, on a short break with my sister. It’s two months away from the launch of my debut novel and I’m searching for shoes. Along Via del Corso, I find them, elegant and punky, with heels just the right side of negotiable. Undecided between the green and the black—which will work better with the silk pleated skirt I’ve been saving?—I uncharacteristically splurge and buy both. This giddiness is short-lived: in April, two weeks into lockdown, the novel is publis...| The Stinging Fly