The Stinging Fly Issue 51/Volume Two | Winter 2024-25

The Stinging Fly #51

by Lisa McInerney (Editor), Annemarie Ní Churreáin (Poetry Editor), Róisín Kiberd (Non Fiction Editor)

Editorial | Lisa McInerney

FICTION
Keith Ridgway | The Wrong Thing
Brendan Killeen | What We Make as Men
Paweł Huelle (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) | The Bridge
Rowe Irvin | Carrier
Tim MacGabhann | Pit
Lowen Reilly | Outlines
James Young | Long Term Parking
Sean Cavanaugh | Boyfriend Reacts
Alicia McAuley | Composition No. 49
Paula Dias Garcia | The Woods
Kirsty Logan | Nightfall
Clemens Meyer (translated by Katy Derbyshire) | The Bells

POETRY
Featured Poet: Laoighseach Ní Choistealbha (translated by Peter Sirr) | Six poems
Martina Evans | Drunken Driving (an extract)
Dean Browne | Interval (in which, snow)
Leeanne Quinn | Two poems
Rosamund Taylor | Drop... Drop...
Paula Meehan | The Liffey Banks, Claddagh Records, 1972
Milena Williamson | Charm for a Sudden Stitch (Remixed)
Ian Duhig | Eternals
Karl Parkinson | Don’t Want to Die
Jake Kennedy | The Visions of Agnes Martin
Daniel Shannon | Votives at Sacré-Coeur
Pascale Petit | Skinner
Kate Wakeling | blood sugar
Grayson Del Faro | A History of Iceland as Told by the Foxes

NON-FICTION
Dan Hogan | Orbital Decay
Eimear McBride | I Once Saw a Beautiful Place
Dulce Maria Cardoso (translated by Rosa Churcher Clarke) | Smoke and Mirrors
Darragh McCausland | Isometric Games
Nicole Morris | How to Get Rid of a Ghost, Part One

Cover art | Hazel Coonagh

240 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 2024

About the author

Lisa McInerney’s work has featured in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, Granta and BBC Radio 4 and in the anthologies Beyond The Centre, The Long Gaze Back and Town and Country. Her debut novel The Glorious Heresies won the 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2016 Desmond Elliott Prize. Her second novel, The Blood Miracles, is published by John Murray in April 2017.

Reviews

[steph · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Bought this after seeing Kate Wakeling's incredible poem 'blood sugar' on Bluesky! Pretty solid collection and I actually ended up liking more short stories than I thought I would (I tend to struggle with them a bit).

Favourite poems: blood sugar by Kate Wakeling; Votives at Sacré-Coeur by Daniel Shannon.

Favourite short fiction: Nightfall by Kirsty Logan (I liked this so much that it's made me want to check out the collection it's in, which is somewhat unprecedented for me!), The Wrong Thing by Keith Ridgway (really strong opening piece to this collection), Carrier by Rowe Irvin, The Woods by Paula Dias Garcia.