Empathy the most important quality for short story writer

Short stories rooted in Cork, set in the city, the suburbs, and the county, by writers who live or have lived in Cork, make up a new anthology, Cork Stories, edited by writers Madeleine D’Arcy and Laura McKenna. 

Published by Doire Press, it’s a sister anthology to Galway Stories, Belfast Stories, and Galway Stories: 2020.

The book includes stories by Kevin Barry, Danny Denton, Mary Morrissy, Martina Evans, Danielle McLoughlin, Jamie O’Connell, and William Wall. 

It also publishes the work of some emerging writers. In all, 18 writers are in the anthology with 10 new stories and eight stories that have been previously published, but not in anthologies.

From Kevin Barry’s ‘Buxton Hill’ set in a gloomy flat with a ‘waft of rent allowance off the place’, Anne O’Leary’s ‘The Cook and The Star’ about when Hollywood came to east Cork, Tadhg Coakley’s story ‘A Pure Dote’ about a father-of-three who has early onset dementia, Oonagh Montague’s ‘Dog Collar’ describing a woman’s unlikely friendship with a priest and Mary Morrissy’s story set in the penthouse apartment of the Elysian Tower, the themes are varied. 

There is no such thing as a typical Cork short story.

As the co-editors of ‘Cork Stories’ write in the introduction: “The best short stories tend not to be showy or dramatic.”

They work on you in a subtle way, until, with a kind of quiet satisfaction, you see the world a little differently.

D’Arcy and McKenna would have liked to have made an open call for stories but that would have meant a huge amount of work. 

“So we had to make a list of people we would love to include, whether they were established or not,” says D’Arcy.

“We really had a fantastic response. There were some writers we’d have loved to include but they simply didn’t have stories that were suitable or didn’t have the time to write new stories.”

Both co-editors are very clear about what the short story means to them.

“Because I was taught originally by Claire Keegan (when she was writer-in-residence at UCC in 2005), I’m interested in short stories that have an arc,” says D’Arcy, who has published two award-winning short story collections, Waiting for the Bullet and Liberty Terrace and is working on a novel.

A past winner of two Hennessy Awards for Irish writers, D’Arcy writes to figure out why people do the things they do.

“I tend to like contemporary short stories. I don’t like too many frills and furbelows. I like honest writing. 

“I really like collaborating with people. I collaborated with Danielle McLoughlin for Fiction at the Friary (the writers’ group). I knew I could ask Laura to do Cork Stories with me.”

McKenna is in the same writers’ workshop as D’Arcy. Her debut historical novel, Words to Shape My Name (2021), praised by the late Hilary Mantel, with whom she corresponded, was short-listed for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award and was a winner at the 2020 IWC Novel Fair. She also writes poetry and is working on her second novel.

“For me, the short story has to have a voice that pulls me in,” says McKenna. “Once it’s in safe hands, I know a story is going somewhere. 

“It’s having that kind of confidence that I love. It can be just a quiet voice which you know is going to be consistent. I’ve written short stories, a very different thing to writing a novel.

“The novel is such a huge unwieldy sort of thing. It has its own life whereas a short story is so contained. 

“I haven’t written one in a number of years. It’s something you have to be in the frame of mind for to bring it all in and take it to its conclusion.”

Both D’Arcy and McKenna are careful not to write about people and cases that they’ve encountered in their previous careers. D’Arcy, from Macroom originally, worked as a criminal lawyer in London while Cork-based McKenna, a native Dubliner, is a former child psychiatrist.

Does McKenna’s background in psychiatry help her understand human nature? “I don’t notice if it does. It’s not something that would enter my consciousness. 

“It’s something I’d never write about. I’m verging on paranoia about this. There are commonalities in people’s lives and stories. But I would be afraid that people would read into my work even if it wasn’t about anyone in particular.

“So I don’t go there at all. I’ve always been interested in historical fiction.”

D’Arcy is equally protective of her former clients. “I remember I had written a couple of stories based on legal aid criminal law clients. But I told John Walsh (of Doire Press, publisher of D’Arcy’s two collections) that I just couldn’t publish those stories.

“I’d be too worried if they could be linked with real people. Unless my characters are completely fictionalised, I’d worry about fabrication.”

”‘Tell me why I should accept you on my course,” said Claire Keegan to D’Arcy at a time when the former lawyer had given up working at law due to health reasons.

“I told her that I was in my kitchen, cooking pasta for my son. I described a leak from the roof and I told Claire I really needed to join the writers’ course.”

I said I had read so much and in the back of my head, I always felt I needed to find out if I could write fiction.

The pitch worked and D’Arcy went on to complete a Masters in creative writing at UCC.

D’Arcy likes Keegan “very much.” and she appreciates her honest critique of other people’s writing including her own.

“At a very bad time in my life in London, I went to some kind of writing class. The teacher made people write and then stand up to read their stuff. She thought everything was lovely.

“I just gave up that class. It was useless. There was no critique. The writing couldn’t all have been lovely. So Claire’s workshop was fascinating for me. 

“I felt I knew what she was talking about and that was heartening. My saving grace was that she found me funny and that I was prepared to work hard.”

McKenna, who has a doctorate in creative writing from UCC, believes there’s “no such thing as the perfect story. Some are really good when you get them. With others, you can see the potential.” 

She and D’Arcy worked with the writers to make the stories as good as they could be.

For D’Arcy, “all the great writers I’ve met have always been essentially quite humble and interested in people and in other people’s work.

“I met Claire Keegan briefly around last Christmas at a talk. She spoke about generosity and the importance of it (for writers). And then to write character-driven work, you need empathy.”

There is plenty of empathy in Cork Stories. 

“I think people will enjoy the variety of them and the quality of them,” says McKenna. “These writers really know their craft.”

And with the two editors on board, who live and breathe writing, these short stories have earned their place in this delightful anthology.