Sara Baume | Tolka Issue Six, July 2024 Mollie leaned over the kitchen sink and picked up a little glass bottle from the windowsill. She measured three drops into the plastic cap and showed me – it was viscous, dark brown – then she added a splash of water from the cold tap, and swirled, and held it out again so that I could see how the substance had turned – in a fraction of a second, in a spontaneous display of alchemy – so pale and cloudy that it resembled weak, milky tea. Then she knocked it down her throat like a shot, twisted her face in disgust and listed the names of the supplements she was taking to sustain her immune system. The sun was high above Mollie’s cabin. Light reached in the kitchen window and across the sink, fingered the rug in front of the log stove...

Liam Harrison | Tolka, Issue Four, March 2023 In July 2022 I set up a conversation over Zoom between two authors and friends, Nicole Flattery and Colin Barrett. I sent them a list of questions, asked them to hit record and left them to it. Nicole Flattery is a writer and critic from Mullingar, County Westmeath. Her short-story collection, Show Them a Good Time, was published by the Stinging Fly Press and Bloomsbury in 2019. Her first novel, Nothing Special, is set against the backdrop of Andy Warhol’s Factory in 1960s New York, and was published in March 2023. Colin Barrett is a writer from County Mayo. His first short-story collection, Young Skins, was published by the Stinging Fly Press in 2013 and his second collection, Homesickness, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2022. His debut novel will be published in late 2023. The questions I sent to Nicole and Colin...

Eimear Arthur | Tolka Issue Eight, September 2025 Off the northwest coast of Ireland, between the white sands of Trá Bhán and the Atlantic’s roiling waves, there is a rocky islet, approximately 150 metres long and 100 metres wide, marked on Google Maps as Illanamarve. The islet transforms depending on point of observation: from certain parts of the surrounding landscape, it presents as one of the many promontories edging the shore, from other angles, it’s clearly a place distinct. Though visible from most nearby towns, such as Annagry and Carrickfinn, at closer range Illanamarve is intermittently blocked from view by rising topography. Just as you catch sight of it, you lose it again. Composed almost entirely of granite, the island has a shallow covering of soil and grass but is devoid of trees or shrubbery. The route from Trá Bhán to the island – passable only at low tide –...

Moya Lothian-McLean | Tolka, Issue Three, August 2022 Emma Dabiri and I are talking at opposite ends of the day. In Pennsylvania, where the Dublin-born scholar and broadcaster is currently teaching, it’s 11 a.m.; for me, the evening is drawing close. But Dabiri is energised; it’s the third occasion (by my count) that we’ve been thrown together in an interview context and yet she always finds a new, fascinating thread of thought during our interactions. Dabiri is a multi-discipline thinker. While her work fits into rich traditions of radical perspectives, her areas of interest – Black feminism, the Black–Irish experience, intersecting histories of oppression, marginalised history, to name but a few – are often underexplored. It’s why her non-fiction interventions have become such landmark works. Her first, Don’t Touch My Hair (2019), is well on its way to modern-classic status as a creative text, marrying academic research, personal experience and...