2 minutes with… Niamh Mac Cabe

Four Night Seas is the new short story collection from award-winning writer Niamh Mac Cabe. Rich and atmospheric, exploring themes of memory, solitude, loss, and the mysterious rhythms of nature and human connection, this collection blurs the line between the internal and external world, and invites us into spaces of beauty, melancholy and subtle transformation. We caught up with Niamh to find out more.

You’re a creator across many formats, including fiction, non fiction, poetry and visual art. What do you love about the short story format, and what do you find challenging?

Love? Slowly unwinding a narrative for the reader, choosing pace, following some kind of inherent ‘rules’ specific to that story. Bringing the reader on a journey with a beginning and end, the total immersion required, the unspoken pact between us. Challenging? Knowing where to begin. With visual art, the beginning is hidden, embedded secretly somewhere in the final piece.

For this collection, did you write all these stories completely separately, or did you find that some stories emerged from a character or event in a previous one?

All of the stories were initially strangers to each other, written separately, many years apart. When I decided on a collection, I chose the participants carefully (loosely based on themes: isolation/inter-connectedness/kin), and spent an age deciding on sequence. Then, I began editing, threading the stories together as a cohesive entity whilst keeping them distinct, in their own lane. Short story collections present such a wide and diverse cast of characters.

Can you tell us about one character from this collection that has really stayed with you and why?

This is a Sophie’s Choice question, and I tremble before it! On reflection, I am forced to mention three: the misunderstood jennet in Sky An Iris, the heroic and unhinged architect in the middle of a rowan tree in The Sundial Pilgrimage, and lastly, the stray greyhound in Dearest Iridium. I still don’t know where she was going, or where she came from. She just passed through, observing.

Can you tell us another event you are looking forward to attending as part of this year’s programme?

The alchemists Niamh Campbell and Doireann Ní Ghríofa conversing about memory with Belinda McKeon on the last day of the festival will be spellbinding and, well, memorable.

Hear more from Niamh at The Art of the Short Story where she joins fellow award-winning writer John O’Donnell as they delve into their collections and their writing, with writer and critic Niall MacMonagle.

Saturday 7 November, 3pm, dlr LexIcon, Dún Laoghaire TICKETS HERE