7 - Bernie McGill - West Cork Music

The cover of Bernie McGill's book This Train Is For shows the interior of an old-fashioned train carriage. It is dimly lit and there is an old-fashioned suitcase on the floor of the carriage next to the window and the leather seat

Welcome to Day 7 of our 2022 West Cork Literary Festival Advent Calendar. Our author today is Bernie McGill.

Bernie McGill is the author of two novels: The Watch House (nominated for the Ireland European Union Prize for Literature in 2019) and The Butterfly Cabinet (named by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes as his novel of the year in 2012). Her first collection of stories, Sleepwalkers, was shortlisted for the prestigious Edge Hill Prize in 2014. Her new short story collection, This Train is For, was published in June 2022 by No Alibis Press. Her work has been published in the UK, the US and in translation in Italy and the Netherlands. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies The Black Dreams, Her Other Language, Belfast Stories, The Long Gaze Back, The Glass Shore and Female Lines. Bernie was Writing Fellow with the Royal Literary Fund (RLF) at Queen’s University, Belfast from 2018 to 2020. She is an Associate Fellow of the RLF and works as a Lector and Writing Facilitator for the organisation, and as a Writing Mentor with the Irish Writers’ Centre. She lives with her family in Portstewart.

Bernie is reading an extract from This Train Is For which was published by No Alibis Press in June 2022. Today’s video unlocked on 7th December 2022 and may be viewed below. Closed caption subtitles are available and may be turned on or off. Press the play button or click “Watch on Youtube” to watch it in full screen.

About our WCLF Literary Advent Calendar

2022 was another wonderful year for Irish writing and so many incredible books by Irish authors and authors living in Ireland were released this year. 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 2022 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.