20 – Afric McGlinchey

Welcome to Day 20 of our West Cork Literary Festival Advent Calendar. Our author today is Afric McGlinchey.

Afric McGlinchey is an Irish poet with strong African connections, having spent her childhood and early adulthood in Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Selected by Poetry Ireland Review as one of The Rising Generation (2016), her other honours include a Hennessy poetry award, Poets Meet Politics award, Northern Liberties prize (USA), Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations. She has been the recipient of several bursaries from the Cork County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland. Her début poetry collection, The lucky star of hidden things, was published by Salmon Poetry, followed by Ghost of the Fisher Cat in 2016, which was nominated for the Forward, Piggott and Poetry Now prizes. Both collections have been well-received, translated into Italian and re-published by L’Arcolaio. A chapbook, Invisible Insane, was published by SurVision in 2019. Afric was awarded an Arts Council of Ireland Literature Award to write Tied to the Wind, a hybrid auto-fictional childhood memoir, which was published in August 2021 by Broken Sleep Books. Afric lives in West Cork.

Afric is reading an extract from Tied to the Wind which was published by Broken Sleep Books in August 2021. Today’s video unlocked on 20th December 2021 and may be viewed below. Closed caption subtitles are available and may be turned on or off. Click on “youtube” or “full screen” icon in the video to watch it in full screen or visit youtube here.

About our WCLF Literary Advent Calendar

2021 was another wonderful year for Irish writing and so many incredible books by Irish authors and authors living in Ireland were released this year. Even though festivals returned in-person and online not every author had the opportunity to launch their books with a public celebration or to engage with audiences in the “usual” way. We’re delighted to bring you a small selection of these authors and we’ve invited twenty-four writers to submit a short video reading from their new books. Our selection is an attempt to show the wide range of Irish writing and in particular to focus on writers whose books we feel deserve more attention and those who were not previously featured in WCLF 2021 events. We hope that you will enjoy the chance to hear these writers reading their own work and to discover some new books for your reading piles.