Thurles Information

Original Sins

A new and exciting publication entitled ‘Original Sins,’ an anthology of short stories by some 22 Irish authors, has just hit our book shelves. This anthology, which includes contributions from Tipperary author’s, Majella O’Gorman,(Thurles), Stella Lannigan, (Gortnahoe), Mary Healy, (Freshford), Maura Barrett, (Killenaule), Martha Woodcock, (Cuffesgrange) and Jane de Montmorency, latter a relative of US President Barak Obama, was recently launched, to high acclaim, in St.Kierans College, Kilkenny.

The writers who feature in this anthology are dreamers who turned their dreams into reality.

Kahlil Gibran writes of the tragedy of leaving a page empty: “Pure was I created and pure will I remain forever…And the sheet of snow white paper did remain pure and chaste forever – pure and chaste – and empty.”

The dream of writing is often so precious, so dearly held, that it is avoided out a fear of failure. All writers fail. No writer avoids disillusion. But after the essential period of consternation, sometimes despair, the piece pearls and the truth of it begins to shine, through the various drafts. The initial inspiration is what fires us all to put pen to paper. The perspiration required to finish a piece is what causes a lot of the initial willing to abandon the dream. A lived dream is a muddied thing, it is tired old and dirty by times, but in becoming more familiar to us, it allows us to know ourselves all the better and to have the easier breathing of one who has attempted, rather than one who has not tried.

Joint editors Suzanne Power and John MacKenna work with the contributors to ‘Original Sins,’ at NUI Kilkenny Campus.

“We have worked with them for four years now and the individuals featured in this collection have stayed the course literally since the very beginning. Our job is to persuade them of what is already in themselves, to foster it to the point where they no longer need convincing and to leave them alone with their empty pages and time. The writers featured here have learned this and are comfortable with the knowledge. They have a full awareness that pages, when a writer is living their dream, fill with word plays known only to them and stories only they can tell.” state Suzanne and John. ”

This well written gem is a must for the ‘bedside locker.’  It will allow each relaxed reader to digest one short story from one author each night, with it’s written content guaranteed to remain the subject of thought, in that time between lights out and dreams beginning.