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This special episode of Season 8 will air on Saturday 27th April 2024 to celebrate the voices of the Northern Soul Roadshow 2024. It is produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to the guest stars…
A. Joseph Black
A. Joseph Black is from Carnlough and lives in West Belfast. Over forty of his short stories and flash fictions have appeared in literary journals and print anthologies. His work has featured in The Irish Times and on BBC Radio Ulster, and he has twice been runner-up in the Colm Tóibín International Short Story Award.
Follow A. Joseph on X at https://twitter.com/A_Joseph_Black
Marianna Patané
Marianna Patané is Irish Italian and spent her early childhood in the Etna region of Sicily before moving back to her mum’s hometown of Belfast. She has worked for years on equality, diversity, and discrimination issues and her writing has explored the themes of cultural identity, alienation, and integration. She has published short works of fiction, and poetry and is currently working on her debut novel. After two years of burning the midnight oil, she very recently completed a part-time Creative Writing Undergraduate at Oxford University. Her writing that explores the themes of cultural identity, alienation and integration.
Remco van Straten
Remco van Straten‘s work is rooted in the northern Dutch coast of his childhood, and in the history and lore of Northern Ireland – his home for the past decades. His short stories have appeared in various anthologies, and he is currently working on his first novel.
Teri Donaghy
Teri Donaghy currently lives in North County Dublin but originally hails from Belfast. Teri’s participation in creative writing ventures resumed in 2011 and she has attended many classes and workshops both in Ireland and the UK. Teri is an Associate member of the Irish Writers Centre and is currently working on her first novel.
Follow Teri on X at https://twitter.com/AuthorR10564
Kyle Mulholland
Kyle Mulholland is an emerging writer based in Dundalk, Louth who mainly works in genre fiction. He’s a two-time recipient of the Irish Arts Council’s Agility award, a successful participant in O’Brien’s Press’ Pitch Perfect competition, and was awarded a place on the Irish Writers Centre National Mentoring Programme 2023.
Follow Kyle on X at https://twitter.com/Kyle_mulh0lland
Marty McKenna
Marty McKenna is an independent Irish poet, born in Tyrone, now living and writing in Belfast. Marty has poems published widely in both online and print journals. He won the Matrix prize in 2017. He has published hree chapbooks (silent stigma, loud leaf; gently, but a dream and sleeve notes) and is currently publishing poems that will inform his first full collection. Marty is a neurodivergent poet.
Follow Marty on X at https://twitter.com/i_twopointzero
Heather Fleming
Heather Fleming lives in Co Down. She has had poems published in the 2023 Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing Anthology, ‘Compass’, also in this years anthology, called, ‘Manifest’. Her work is in An Anthology of New Poetry, ‘In My Own Words, What If?’. Her writing was accepted by the Royal Society of Literature, for the Bonnie Greer workshop. Her stories have aired on BBC Radio Ulster, ‘Telltales’. Her visual poems were exhibited at the Belfast Book Festival (2023). Heather has received bursaries from the Irish Writers Centre. She enjoys reading her work with audiences and has been invited to read at many events.
Follow Heather on X at https://twitter.com/heather1fleming
Theresa Ryder
Theresa Ryder is a writer and teacher with an M.A. (Classics) from Maynooth University. She is a winner of the Molly Keane Creative Writing award, a Best Small Fictions nominee, and awarded a place on the 2024 Northern Soul Roadshow from the Irish Writers Centre. Her work has been published widely. Contributions include: The 32: an Anthology of Irish Working Class Voices, Same Page Anthology, The Honest Ulsterman, Antigone Journal, The Waxed Lemon, and The Irish Times. Her play Ritual Dance was performed in Cork Arts Theatre in 2023.She is currently writing a memoir aided by the National Mentoring Programme and an English literature bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland.
Follow Theresa on X at https://twitter.com/TheresaRyder_
Aileen Malone
Aileen Malone, northside Dubliner. Recipient of Arts Council Agility Award 2022 and Irish Writers Centre Mentor/Member Duo programme 2022. To be published shortly in Stinging Fly. Takes courses with the IWC, building expertise and enthusiasm for the most democratic of art forms. Aileen juggles this with life drawing, painting and earning a crust.
Follow Aileen on x at https://twitter.com/aileendub
Paddy McCurdie
Paddy McCurdie is a County Armagh writer, poet, aspiring novelist and screenwriter and is part of a local writing group in his hometown of Portadown. He was the recipient of a Community Arts Partnership Good Relations Award in 2023 for writing haiku and an awardee for the Irish Writers Centre Northern Soul Roadshow for 2024.
Beckie Stew
Beckie Stew is a poet from the North of Ireland, a spoken word artist and literature graduate. She was an awardee of a place on the Northern Soul Roadshow, 2024. Her work has previously appeared in print in the USA, Australia, UK and Ireland. Bringing her poems on stage since 2019, she has taken part in slams, open mics and festivals, winning Poetry Slam in Barcelona, 2022.
Anita Gracey
Anita Gracey has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Washing Windows – Irish Women Write Poetry (1-1V), Abridged, Honest Ulsterman, The Poets’ Republic, Culture Matters, Bangor Literary Review, Sonder, Dream Well Writing and Poetry Jukebox. Anita was shortlisted for Over the Edge New Writer of the Year 2018, longlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writing in 2019, shortlisted Chultúrlann Poetry Competition 2020 and special mention in Corsham Poetry Competition 2021 and honourable mention in Chultúrlann Poetry Competition 2022, longlisted for Soundwaves Competition 2023, and shortlisted for Skylight 47 Mentoring Programme 2023. The Arts Council awarded Anita with an Individual Disabled Artist (IDA) in 2020. Anita was the recipient of a Community Arts Partnership Good Relations Award in 2023. Anita in March 2024 completed Irish Writers Centre’s, Northern Soul Roadshow programme. Anita facilitates online creative writing voluntarily for Ataxia Foundation Ireland since August 2023.
Rory Milhench
Rory Milhench grew up in Belfast and later undertook a Ph.D. in History at Trinity College Dublin. His fiction has been published in A New Ulster, Books Ireland Magazine, The Madrigal Press’ An Áitiúil Anthology and the University of Ulster’s New Worlds, New Voices: A Books Beyond NI Anthology. He was a 2024 participant of the Irish Writers Centre Northern Soul Roadshow.
Cian Dunne
Cian Dunne is currently studying the MA Translation at Queen’s University Belfast, having previously studied English Literature and Russian at Trinity College Dublin. He was formerly Editor-In-Chief of Trinity JOLT, and is the current translations editor for The Apiary. He attended the Belfast Book Festival as an Irish Writers Centre Young Writer Delegate in 2023.
Follow Cian on X at https://twitter.com/ciandunne_10
Darcey Dugan
Darcey Dugan’s poetry has appeared in journals such as The Rialto, Abridged, The Honest Ulsterman, The Waxed Lemon, Púca, and The Stony Thursday Book. She was selected as a young writer delegate for The West Cork Literary Festival 2022 and her writing is archived in UCD’s Irish Poetry Reading Archive. She is currently working on her first collection.
Follow Darcey on X at https://twitter.com/DarceyDugan
Fiona O’Rourke
Behind the Storms
Fiona O’Rourke writes fiction, auto fiction, and accidental poetry. She reads at open mics and has story slammed to an audience of 180 at the Dublin Story Slam. Currently she is querying Palestine Street, Belfast stories from The Holylands, and Bullet Points, an auto fiction of life during inner wartime. She is the co-organiser and MC for Open Mic for Gaza, a zoom fundraiser on International Women’s Day 2024, and the organiser/facilitator for eXpress Write For Gaza, a guided writing session fundraiser. All donations from these events go to the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund, a charity working in Palestine.
She is the curator & facilitator for Irish Writers Centre Northern Soul Roadshow 2024 funded by Arts Council Northern Ireland. She was the facilitator & coordinator of Writing The Earth, an Irish Writers Centre and iCRAG collaboration for writers and scientists, in 2023. Fiona is a published author from the North of Ireland with recent stories included in Shorter Stories Ireland, Dublin Story Slam, Fortnight Magazine, The Storms Journal, and Eat The Storms podcast. She is a Pushcart Prize Nominee for Driving Lessons published in the Storms Journal II. Her creative nonfiction was selected by Munster Lit, and will be published in the Southword Journal in autumn 2024.
Other work has been broadcast on RTE Francis MacManus, translated in Troquel Revista de Letras, and published in literary journals including The Waxed Lemon, The Lonely Crowd, Sonder, Books Ireland Magazine, The Broken Spiral, The Fish Anthology, and more. She was a finalist in the inaugural Cairde Short Story Award with a story from Palestine Street. Her first published short story Wrong Whiskey was a prize winner at the Fish International Short Story Award. She moved to Dublin when selected by portfolio to study for a Masters in Philosophy in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin. She was a joint winner at the 2016 Irish Novel Fair with Have You Found Luke? In 2017, she won a place on the inaugural XBorders project with the Irish Writers Centre and Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and was awarded an Irish Writers Centre Cill Rialaig writer-in-residence. Fiona has designed and facilitated creative writing courses and programmes at Trinity College Dublin Innovation Academy, libraries, festivals, in the community, and at Irish Writers Centre Dublin.
Follow Fiona on x at https://twitter.com/fionamkorourke
Find out more about Fiona and read about Open Mic for Gaza at https://fionao.substack.com/
Damien B Donnelly, Producer, Host and Poet
Damien B Donnelly is a 48-year-old Irish, adopted, queer writer and podcast producer who spent 23 years living in Paris, Amsterdam, and London working in the fashion industry, returning to Dublin at the end of 2020. He is the host and producer of the poetry podcast Eat the Storms and the editor-in-chief of The Storms, a journal of poetry, prose and visual art. His debut pamphlet, Eat the Storms, published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and featured on the Poetry Book Society Winter List 2020/21, followed by a Pushcart Prize nominated Stickleback (micro collection) and In the Jitterfritz of Neon, a conversational pamphlet co-written with Eilín de Paor. His first full collection Enough! was published by Hedgehog in August 2022. His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals, both online and in print. His 2nd full collection Back from Away arrives on the 8th May 2024 with Turas Press
The Storms journal is available at https://eatthestorms.com/the-storm-shop/
He is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/deuxiemepeau and instagram at both @damiboy and @weshallalwayshaveparis
You can purchase his pamphlets and collections at his website https://deuxiemepeaupoetry.com/
Backing music for Eat the Storms is from Purple Planet Royalty Free Music, with thanks…
https://www.purple-planet.com/
You can find us on many platforms including Spotify and here is the link…
Storm Shelter 