We read because we want to experience lives and emotions beyond our own, to learn, to see with others’ eyes.
The 32 is a celebration of working-class voices from the island of Ireland. Edited by award-winning novelist Paul Mc Veigh, this intimate and illuminating collection features memoir and essays from established and emerging Irish voices including Kevin Barry, Dermot Bolger, Roddy Doyle, Lisa Mc Inerney, Lyra Mc Kee and many more.
Too often, working-class writers find that the hurdles they come up against are higher and harder to leap over than those faced by writers from more affluent backgrounds. As in Common People – an anthology of working-class writers edited by Kit de Waal and the inspiration behind this collection – The 32 sees writers who have made that leap reach back to give a helping hand to those coming up behind.
Without these working-class voices, without the vital reflection of real lives or role models for working-class readers and writers, literature will be poorer. We will all be poorer.
Tentang Penulis
Paul Mc Veigh’s debut novel, The Good Son (Salt, 2015), won the Polari First Novel Prize and was named by Kerry Hudson in the Observer as one of the ‘exceptional working-class novels from the last few years’. He has twice won the Mc Crea Literary Award and has toured the UK and Ireland with his plays and comedy. His short stories have appeared in the Irish Times, Faber’s Being Various and Kit de Waal’s Common People anthologies, on BBC Radio 3, 4 and 5, and Sky Arts. Paul was fiction editor at the Southword Journal, co-edited the Belfast Stories anthology and co-founded the London Short Story Festival. @paul_mc_veigh