Not finding a four-leaf clover in the playground. Taking two leaves off one clover and holding the stalk up to a full one, then going around boasting about my fake four-leaf clover, knowing in my heart it could only bring bad luck. My mother in a Dolce & Gabbana swimsuit at the hot sulphur pools in Fontpédrouse, and the snow on the mountains behind her. The colour and shape of the fallen maple leaves in Phoenix Park, walking around on my own after taking oxycodone. Ice-creams in the corner shop like little pink feet. The girl from the school next door who used to hang out in the bushes where we went to smoke. She had cigarette burns all down her cleavage. She said she let her boyfriends do it and seemed to find it funny. Watching a video of a bullfighter being gored to death and the camera panning...

Mícheál McCann | Tolka Issue Five, June 2024 Derek Jarman’s The Tempest (1979) has almost ended. Miranda and Ferdinand are in wedding garb. A band of white-suited sailors loiter gayly. The set is aristocratic and regal. The frame fills with confetti of such colour that the screen becomes momentarily blocked with a pastel pink. The confetti thins, carpeting the entire set, to reveal a figure in golds and yellow helmeted with a pearl-gold bonnet from which stem seven white-gold feathers; discs of translucent lemon fabric imitate the dawn rising behind her. This is the Goddess come to bless the wedding party, yet it is her rendition of the torch song ‘Stormy Weather’ that haunts my imagination most. The lyrics are smoky and sad; her face is lit by an eerie smile. I lie awake later that evening thinking of the lilting sailors, Welch dwarfed between them, beaming as she sings....

Liam Harrison | Tolka, Web Only, November 2024 In September I spoke to Colin Barrett about his latest book, the novel Wild Houses (2024), which was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Colin is also the author of the short-story collections Young Skins (2013) and Homesickness (2022). A short story from Young Skins, ‘Calm with Horses’, was adapted by Nick Rowland into a film in 2019, starring Cosmo Jarvis, Niamh Algar and Barry Keoghan. Years ago, I was working in book distribution when a friend first recommended that I read Young Skins. I responded petulantly to the recommendation, thinking that smalltown Irish malaise was overdone, and that I’d already read enough fiction about it. In our conversation below, Colin touches on the sweeping naivety of youth – how being dismissive, and growing out of it, is a necessary part of being a writer and, in this instance, a reader. Thankfully, I...

Liam Harrison | Tolka, Online Only, May 2025 Over the years, we’ve published a series of casual conversations between writers in Tolka. We have paired authors such as Colin Barrett and Nicole Flattery, Wendy Erskine and Louise Kennedy, as they have reflected on how they write their books and discuss the fundamental underpinnings of their art, as well as talking about what they’ve had for dinner and seen on the telly recently. We’re now delighted to publish a new conversation between Lucy Caldwell and Aimée Walsh. Lucy and Aimée first met in 2022, when Aimée took Lucy’s Faber Academy course on the short story, and they’ve stayed in touch ever since. Lucy and Aimée are both writers from Belfast. Lucy is the author of four novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and three collections of short stories published by Faber: Multitudes (2016) and Intimacies (2021) and, most recently, Openings (2024). Her most recent novel, These...