This week on The Prompt on RTÉ Radio 1, author Caoilinn Hughes joins Zoë Comyns to chat about embarrassment, drafting, titles and mini masterclasses - listen above.
With new writing inspired by the prompt 'Embarrassment', three pieces have been selected from Sue Turbett, Deborah Meltvedt and JL Bogenschneider.
Writer Sue Turbett ignores punctuation and grammar to transport the listener to childhood and an indelible moment for the main character in Unravelling.
'On a spring sun shining primrose and catkins blossoming kind of day a circle of eager infant hands held red green yellow and blue ribbons all attached to the crown of a tall pole Steven Jones stood opposite me in shorts and fallen socks holding a green ribbon In skirt-too-long and fringe-too-short I clutched a red ribbon and imagined myself the May Queen…'
Caoillinn says of this piece that youthful embarrassments are often seen as ‘being the most representative... they‘ve lived in your memory for so long that they’re so deeply etched."
In Deborah Meltvedt’s Murderess, the writer trawls over things that have gone wrong in her life each one darker than the last:
Things I have killed
a mouse by swamp cooler
on a hot Fresno day
when I didn’t see its body
hiding under hard metal shade
and in the aftermath of death screams
scooped up the tiny crush
of bones and bits, buried it in trash,
and let the guilt of rodent manslaughter
haunt my heart for years.
Caoilinn admired that this poem was "Plain spoken, I love the shifts in tone…" and how it becomes ‘hyper, almost painfully confessional.’
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Listen to last week's episode of The Prompt, with author Dave Rudden
In the final piece by JL Bogenschneider, Reflections of a Mirror, read by Jennifer O’Dea, the listener is transported to ‘a faded restaurant in a dismal and forgotten town between Brussels and Paris’ and the scene becomes increasingly intriguing. This is a story that involves espionage, mirrors, reflections, strangers and no small amount of mystery.
"There were mirrors on every wall of the restaurant. In the reflection of the mirror behind the bar, there were seven tables, three of which were occupied. Several times I’d attempted to read a novel that opened in a restaurant, but it was European and confusing and never quite clear what was going on. A reversed stranger entered."
Caoilinn says the entire opening sets up great images, provocative ideas and the story right from the beginning. You want to keep listening. ‘There are so many unexpected turns in the narrative.’
Caoilinn Hughes's latest novel, The Alternatives, was a New York Times Editor's Choice. Her second novel, The Wild Laughter won the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award. Her debut was Orchid & the Wasp.
Caoillinn herself is working on a new novel and says that she’s ‘at the stage where hopefully my partner won’t break up with me… I’m pretty awful to be around for the first year of a novel. The dark night of the soul begins for me at the beginning."
The Prompt airs on Sundays 7.30pm on RTÉ Radio 1 and wherever you get your podcasts - listen back here.
