My story Last Respects at Maggie O'Malley's Wake has been published in Necessary Fiction.
I love the simple and clean aesthetic of the Necessary Fiction website. No images, no sidebars, minimal colour, it gives the feeling of looking at the pages of a book, simply made for readers.
This story that began as a two-page exercise in a workshop at Philip Schultz's Writers Studio, partly inspired by an article in The Irish Times by Frank McNally on how traditional wakes are still commonplace in rural Ireland. It was a pleasure working with the editor at Necessary Fiction, Lacey Dunham, though it took a beat or two for me to get used to the Americanisation of my original spelling. “Neighbor” in particular was a bit rough and provoked consternation and slagging from my Irish family. “What the feck happened to the U?”
