And It’s Not Over Yet

We had a wonderful night on Saturday night in the beautiful venue of Aonach Mhacha as part of the AE Russell Festival. The flash fiction stories fair blew us away. The wonderful Cathy Carson, who simultaneously made our hearts swell and our eyes smart with her beautiful and masterfully crafted story Copper Pennies has generously reviewed each of the other writers over on her Facebook page. So if you are on Facebook, it’s worth hopping over to read her thoughts on it. We’ve collected her posts and shared them on the Armagh Writers’ page too.

If you’d like to watch the writers read their stories you can find them on our webpage here.

We were delighted to have music by the highly acclaimed Armagh Rhymers at the interval. These world-class traditional Irish musicians had our feet tapping and hearts leaping – especially when they announced their arrival with a blast of the Loughnashade horn!

It was another full house and we had to bring in extra chairs from the prize-winning Aonach Mhacha Café to accommodate everyone. Our thanks to The AE Russell festival for inviting us to be a part of this fabulous week – it’s not over yet and you might still be able to take part in some of the events before the end of this week (Monday 10th April 2023). The event listing is here.

AE Russell aka George Russell was born in Lurgan, Co Armagh in 1867 and was a writer, an artist, a mystic, a visionary, a genius and more. I’ve been learning a lot about him at the festival events this week and I’m intrigued. He is an inspiring and surprising character who has contributed in many important ways to the arts and culture of Ireland. He founded the National Irish Theatre in Dublin, was a pacifist who inspired Gandi, was a close friend of Pamela Travers and she has nods to AE and their friendship in her famous story, Mary Poppins. The list goes on and I am amazed at how few people have heard of him. This, I’m told, is due to his great humility and lack of ego. For more information, check out this article.

Flash Fiction Armagh goes from strength to strength as this year progresses. We’re looking forward to being part of the John Hewitt Summer School this July. This will be a showcase event with details to follow soon.

Submissions are now open for our Flash Fiction in the Orchard event at the Armagh Food and Cider Festival on Thursday 7th September 2023! The deadline for submissions is 1st August 2023. To submit please email your story to [email protected] with the subject line “Flash Fiction in the Orchard 2023 Submission” and your story cut and pasted into the body of the email (not as an attachment please – it gets fiddly to manage!)

Apart from Flash Fiction Armagh news, my other big excitement is that the pond I made during lockdown has frogspawn…actually in less than a week they’re looking a lot like tadpoles.

So I guess that makes it officially springtime! Yay!

Byddi Lee