Commonwealth Short Story Prize

Lucy Caldwell has been named Regional Winner, Canada & Europe for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her story Killing Time.

The prize provides a platform for writers from the 53 countries of the Commonwealth to share unpublished work with a wider audience.

The five regional winners (Africa, Asia, Canada & Europe, Caribbean, Pacific) will now move forward to the next round and the overall winner will be announced in Kampala, Uganda, on 13 June to coincide with a series of Commonwealth Writers initiatives in East Africa.

Killing Time is the story of ayoung girl just turned thirteen who tries to take her own life. She swallows down as many paracetamol and baby aspirin tablets as she can and goes downstairs to have dinner with her family. That evening, and in the days that follow, she waits for something to happen, caught between the equally terrifying possibilities that … Read more

Le point de rencontre

Lucy’s novel The Meeting Point was translated as Le point de rencontre

À la frontière de deux mondes, l’Occident et l’Orient, à la croisée de deux chemins, le mensonge et la fidélité, une femme, Ruth, jeune mariée et jeune mère, mise à l’épreuve par l’inconnu et le danger, doit choisir son camp.

C’est l’heure du grand départ. Ruth n’a jamais quitté le cocon familial ni son doux confort occidental. Mais Euan, son mari, a trouvé un poste au Bahreïn. Une nouvelle aventure qu’ils vont vivre en famille, avec leur bébé. Une fois installée dans leur ghetto pour expatriés, Ruth déchante. Car l’inconnu se trouve, en fait, sous son propre toit. Son mari n’est pas celui qu’elle croyait. Il les a emmenés dans ce pays pour accomplir une mission dangereuse, pour lui, et pour eux. Bouleversée et isolée, Ruth essaie de se concentrer sur sa petite fille. Mais le voisinage avec … Read more

“Through the Wardrobe” & “Poison”

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the death of C.S. Lewis, a new short story, “Through the Wardrobe”, was commissioned by the BBC. An edited version was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 24th November at 7.45pm.

You can watch and listen to Lucy reading the story in its entirety at the Word Factory here

Belfast Noir

Meanwhile, another new short story, “Poison”, will be published in Akashic’s prestigious ‘City Noir’ series in spring 2014.

The collection will feature the cream of Northern Ireland’s fiction writing community as well as crime writers from further afield who happen to have a Belfast connection. among them Glenn Patterson, Eoin McNamee, Garbhan Downey & Lee Child.

More details about the anthology, edited by Adrian McKinty and Stuart Neville, can be found here… Read more

Irish Novel of the Year – Shortlist

All The Beggars Riding is among the 5 shortlisted titles for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award 2013, which was announced on April 17at Dublin’s Mansion House by Kerry Group’s Aoife O’Brien. The €15,000 award is the largest monetary prize for fiction available solely to Irish authors. Previous winners of the award include Christine Dwyer Hickey, Anne Enright, Neil Jordan, John Banville, Joseph O’Neill, Roddy Doyle, Sebastian Barry and John McGahern.

The chair of the jury, Robert McCrum said “After an intensive selection process, shared throughout this spring with my distinguished associate Rita Ann Higgins, I am delighted to announce these 5 fine writers for the shortlist of a most important Irish literary prize. It has been such an honour to make a contribution to this part of Listowel Writers’ Week, and I look forward to working with Rita Ann in picking the winner. It’s going … Read more

Belfast’s One City One Book 2013

“You are standing, face upturned to the window, breathing in the sun. I can see you, almost: if I close my eyes I can almost see you. A Thursday morning in May, 1972”.
All the Beggars Riding, a novel by Lucy Caldwell – Belfast choice for One City One Book Belfast 2013

The people of Belfast are being encouraged to get reading with One City One Book which returns to the city this May. All the Beggars Riding, the latest novel by Belfast born author Lucy Caldwell, has been selected as Belfast’s second ‘One City One Book’ read and will be the focus of this Arts Council initiative to develop the art of reading and promote Belfast’s rich creativity. Narrated by Lara, nearing forty and nursing her dying mother,the chosen book is the heartbreaking portrait of a woman confronting her past.
Developed by the Arts Council and supported by … Read more

Lucy interviewed by The Thought Fox

From the award-winning author of The Meeting Point comes another powerful exploration of love, desire and family, featuring a narrator raking over the past to uncover secrets long-buried – secrets that take in The Troubles in 1970s Belfast. All the Beggars Riding confirms Lucy Caldwell as one of the most accomplished young novelists writing today – and we’re delighted to hear that the Arts Council in Northern Ireland have chosen it as their One City One Book Belfast choice for 2013.

(this is an excerpt, the full interview can be read here)

Lucy answered a few of our questions …

– Where did the idea come from for All the Beggars Riding?

Some years ago, just after my first novel was published and before I’d even begun my second, I had a dream, in which this double-layered, double-crossing surgeon’s life came to me. It was such a vivid and … Read more

Lucy visits Hydebank Wood Prison

See the original post at Sharing Stories

On 18th September 2013, our shared reading group at Hydebank Wood Prison welcomed a much anticipated visit from Lucy Caldwell, author of the Arts Council’s ‘One City, One Book‘ choice, All the Beggars Riding. We have been reading the novel in our group for a few months now, a few pages one week, swathes of it the next. I read the novel aloud, as I do in all my groups, because we feel it better, that way. We savour the words, the sentences, the pauses and the gaps as they come to life through the simple act of being read (“no book ‘exists’ without a reader”, says Caldwell). And we talk. We pour our own experiences into our reading(s) of the text; the text projects for us a new set of experiences that we map on to our own, and … Read more