I'm looking forward very much to going to Ireland in July, to Bantry, for the West Cork Literary Festival.

An Evening with Kevin Barry and Carys Davies will start at 8.30pm on Tuesday July 19th at the Maritime Hotel.

Tickets are 16 Euro - to book, please visit the festival website here

The festival runs from July 17th through 23rd hosting readings, workshops and tea-time conversations with over 60 writers, including John Banville, Nick Laird, Max Porter, Danielle McLaughlin, Lisa McInerney, Thomas Morris, Jo Shapcott, Gloria Steinem, Zadie Smith and many more.

I'm delighted to have my story The Quiet in the latest issue of the Australian magazine The Canary Press. There are stories here by Dave Eggers and Etgar Keret and others, each one beautifully illustrated within the Gustavo Adolfo Ortega Rojas-designed cover. I love the image created by the Melbourne based artist, Samuel Lewis, for The Quiet::

I am very pleased and grateful to have been awarded a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library to work on my next book from September this year till summer 2017. The NYPL awards 15 Cullman Fellowships each year to writers, independent scholars and academics. More information here

Joanna Walsh (Vertigo) and I will be reading from our collections and discussing the resurgence in popularity of the short story with Paul McVeigh, author of The Good Son and co-founder of the London Short Story festival.

4.30 pm at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich - tickets here

On Thursday March 10th at 6pm I'll be reading and discussing short stories with Crista Ermiya, author of The Weather in Kansas, at the York Explore Library and Archive. The event is part of New Writing North's Read Regional campaign and of York's International Women's Festival - for the full festival programme visit here. For other Read Regional events at libraries across the north visit the Read Regional website.

I will be in conversation with Professor Ruth Robbins of Leeds Beckett University as part of the

university's (Re)Writing Yorkshire series. The evening is being held in conjunction with New Writing North and is the opening event of Read Regional 2016. It's free and open to the public and will take place at 6.30pm on Tuesday 1 March at the Leeds Library (18 Commercial Street, Leeds, LS1 6AL).

More information here

Tickets can be booked here

I'm delighted to be taking part in New Writing North's Read Regional campaign this year in libraries and at festivals across the north of England. Visit their website for dates, venues and details of events taking place from now until the end of June.

Readings are taking place throughout the world following a call from the International Literature Festival in Berlin to express solidarity and raise awareness of the plight of the Palestinian-born poet, Ashraf Fayadh, who is under sentence of death in Saudi Arabia, accused of apostasy and the promotion of atheism. I'll be joining other local writers, including novelists Jo Baker and Carol Birch, and poet Paul Farley, at Lancaster Central Library, Market Square, Lancaster this Thursday 14th January. Do come if you're in the area. It starts at 7pm and entry is free

To find out where other readings are happening, visit the Berlin Festival site here

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'Standing now at her shoulder, no longer caring much about his future, Arthur Pritt began to speak....'

'De pie a la misma altura que ella, sin preocuparse mucho por su futuro, Arthur Pritt comenzó a hablar....'

Jubilee, one of the stories from my new colllection The Redemption of Galen Pike is in the current edition of Tierra Adentro along with stories by five other British writers whose work has not yet appeared in Mexico: Lucy Caldwell, Kirsty Logan, Adam Marek, Diriye Osman, Courttia Newland (click here to visit the magazine's website).The stories in Tierra Adentro have all been translated into Spanish and each comes with its own original illustration - here's the one for Jubileo: