After forty years on the planet, you’d think I would be used to this. Public shame about my body. Opinions of strangers. The eyes. The laughs. The echo of car horns and abuse hurled from passing motors. That feeling of being overlooked or underestimated due to my size, or worse, being looked over and assessed and found wanting. Derision that seeks to and often succeeds in sending me into hiding. Into my mind. Into poetry. Into the safety of the lifelines I know best. | The Stinging Fly
There have been many surprises since I embarked on a career as a writer: the constant feelings of inadequacy, long bouts of creative constipation, the acute pleasure of getting pissed with other writers at literary launches, and the vast amount of time I spend planning and writing applications. If I could somehow conjure a world in which all these applications came to fruition – the residencies, collections, cross-disciplinary exhibitions, the visits to galleries and archives around the wor...| The Stinging Fly
When I was publicly announced as a Granta Best Young British Novelist, I was working in a wine shop. I felt insecure as no one else on the list seemed to work a job like mine, and I probably felt a little vain too: ‘Why is a Granta Best Young British Novelist being yelled at for shelving beer cans badly?’| The Stinging Fly
