GALWAY WRITER Jim Ward will feature alongside Kevin Barry, Lisa McInerney, and Roddy Doyle in a new anthology, The 32 – Anthology of Irish Working Class Voices.
The 32, edited by the award-winning Belfast author, Paul McVeigh, and published by Unbound, also features Dermot Bolger and the late Lyra McKee. The idea behind the collection was to feature 16 established writers and 16 emerging talents.
Jim Ward is from Salthill and describes himself as an “experienced emerging talent”. He is the author of the award-winning play Just Guff. His second play, Three Quarks, was performed on Zoom by the James Joyce Centre in Dublin to mark Joyce’s birthday. His poem, ‘Orange Sunset’, took 3rd place in the Bobby Sands Creative Writing Contest 2021.
Inspirations
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Jim’s story in the collection is ‘Begging From Beggars’. “The title comes from a sarcastic remark of my late father after I got yet another rejection letter following another job interview,” says Jim.
“I spent a year unemployed after graduating in Industrial Engineering from UCG before I got a job. This affected my self-esteem and I swore I’d write about it sometime. Class in Ireland is difficult to define because of our collective history – ‘tuppence ha’penny looking down on tuppence’ I’ve heard it said and each time there’s a recession it’s the ordinary people who pick up the tab. I have never forgotten my experience of that and it reinforced my political convictions.”
The 32 will be launched this Wednesday, July 7, at 7pm and admission is free b registering via: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-32-online-launch-tickets-160809994021. The 32 – Anthology of Irish Working Class Voices is on sale at Charlie Byrne's Bookshop, The Cornstore, Middle Street.
