Ever thought about writing non-fiction, be it an essay, a memoir or even a brief snapshot of your life? Why not take the leap?
In a new series, author, critic and broadcaster Cristín Leach explores the craft of non-fiction.
RTÉ Radio 1 is home to one of the best outlets for audio essays in the world. Sunday Miscellany has been broadcasting "new writing for radio accompanied by complementary music" every Sunday morning since 1968. It has produced anthologies, from the Marie Heaney-edited volumes published in 2000, 2004, 2009, to producers Clíodhna Ní Anluain's celebration of 50 years in 2019 and Sarah Binchy's compilation published in 2023.
Essays by names famous, emerging, new and unknown sit side by side on this show. Some of the work is commissioned, but most comes to the programme via open submission. Writers Donal Ryan, Claire Kilroy, Louise Kennedy, Nicole Flattery, Colm Tóibín, Joseph O'Connor, Kevin Barry, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Martina Devlin, Nuala O'Connor, Rosaleen McDonagh, Emilie Pine, Danielle McLaughlin, Melatu Uche Okorie, Veronica Dyas, Mia Gallagher, Mary Morrissy, Éilis Ní Dhuibhne, Enda Wyley, Niamh Campbell, Susan McKay, Manchán Magan and many, many more have read essays for this show, including myself.
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Listen to Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio 1
I read my writing aloud in my head, and sometimes out loud in the room, when I am editing it. The result is that everything I write is also written to be read aloud. In order to be happy with a final draft, I need to hear how the phrases fit with each other, to understand the cadence of each sentence, and to hear what note each individual word brings to the overall composition made by the sentences together. My 2024 Sunday Miscellany essay Take a Seat begins, "One of my favourite photographs of me and my dad was taken on my wedding day." It was written mostly as I sat in the Honan Chapel in UCC contemplating my divorce and the visual symbolism to be found in the artworks in the church, including the hand-carved wooden chairs made by the recently deceased artist Imogen Stuart for this space. Audio essays work well when they take the listener from the particular to the universal, or at least expand their thinking towards some kind of bigger business, what Vivian Gornick calls "the insight, the wisdom", the thing you have come to say. My essay for Sunday Miscellany is really about resilience, and love.
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Listen to Cristín Leach's audio essay Dic a Door Dac, for Keywords
Audio essays can be one of the most personal modes for creative non-fiction. The broadcast of Windows and Anchors, which I wrote for the Zoë Comyns-conceived and produced RTÉ Radio 1 programme Keywords during lockdown in 2020, was a formative step in finding the right voice for my memoir, Negative Space. Audio essays also call for the writer to speak right into the ears of the listener, which makes this format one of the most intimate forms of non-fiction writing around. My essay for Keywords season 2, Dic a Door Dac, begins by addressing this truth: "Is there anything more intimate than a whisper in your ear? The bounce of the soundwaves on your skin?"
Cristín Leach's From Ten till Dusk, A Portrait of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts in 12 Stories is published by the RHA - listen to the audio series here.
