This week on The Prompt on RTÉ Radio 1, guest writer Edel Coffey's writing prompt is 'An Unexpected Parcel' - listen above.
The following writers' work was shortlisted for the episode:
B Cotter - Unexpected Item in the Dream
F Keane - Last Post
B Ashley - Limbs and Things
J Keegan - Party Games
J Lindsay Gray - A green glass heart
L Theis - The Box (Please Don’t Read This Poem)
M Coll - Express Post Entry
C Hennemann - Six of Cups
T Bennett - A Dream of One More Outing
Edel selected three pieces of writing blind from the shortlist – and each takes up the prompt in refreshing ways.
In Limbs and Things by Bebe Ashley, the main character’s interest in buying things by mail order including stationery escalates as she is given a budget in her university job:
'At least once a semester, I would get to spend the university’s money at my favourite shop, a shop that I took the most joy from, for its name alone: Limbs and Things. Limbs and things were exactly what the shop sold with high-tech medical mannequins and interchangeable body parts used to simulate different diagnoses and train students in clinical skills.'
When a box of limbs goes missing, the main character can’t hide her disappointment. Edel Coffey says she ‘loves a sense of mystery or tension in stories’, ‘this writer seeds this very well… there’s a dark tone to the opening.’
Trish Bennet’s poem also features in the episode.
A Dream of One More Outing is dedicated to the writer’s mother-in-law Moira:
On the outskirts of Galway, she handbrakes in
to have a scoot around the Terryland Lidl,
gets overexcited about rollators on sale in the middle aisle.
She lifts the display model single-handedly,
‘Look! It's so light! There’s a seat and space for the handbag.
Where were these when my hips were gammy?’
She flakes down the aisle, corners so tight
she collides with a child.
The toddler raises the roof with a siren cry, herself skedaddles,
leaves me to apologise to the angry mammy
for my ninety-year-old mother-in-law's
reckless rollator driving.
Edel notes how this piece is ‘so packed with action… it feels like this piece has something to teach us and in my mind it’s how to enjoy yourself.’
Edel discusses with The Prompt's host Zoë Comyns when is the right time to take on a difficult or sad subject: ‘ Sometimes it’s good to take a bit of time, especially if it’s something sensitive or very personal, write it down but maybe don’t press publish or print just yet, wait a while and see how you feel about it’.
In the final piece selected for the episode, A Green Glass Heart, Jennifer Lindsay Gray explores grief through the prism of a glass heart delivered to a woman’s doorstep.
'When she picks it up, she stops and stares at the handwriting, then hurriedly she rips it open.
She removes a handful of tissue paper, and with great care unfurls it. Swaddled inside is a green glass heart the colour of light in a kelp forest. She turns it over in her hands, mesmerised by the smooth, the coolness of the object. As she does so, something flutters to her feet. She picks it up, and finds it is a hand written note of just one word: Sorry.'
Zoë & Edel discuss how they interpret this piece in different ways and how there is enough room in the piece for the listener to step into the story and imprint their own impressions on it.
The heart could be "an apology, maybe they’re returning it, it could be to do with a death…there’s so much mystery in it, there’s so much is not explained and yet you get a real sense of this person, what’s happened in her life."
Edel’s third novel In Glass Houses will be published by Sphere in 2026.
Next week on The Prompt, Zoë talks to writer Sinéad Moriarty, and they discuss three new pieces written for the prompt A World Without.
The Prompt, RTÉ Radio 1, Sundays at 7.30pm - listen back here
