It’s a widely held belief that when it comes to short stories, Irish writers are among the best in the world.

What are the reasons for this? What does it mean for a writer to be conscious of working within such an esteemed tradition? 

Chaired by short-story writer Lucy Caldwell, editor of Being Various, this conversation explores the role of anthologies, and the inevitably political role of anthologising, in the celebration and circulation of the Irish short story. 

Who shapes the canon? Whose stories are or have been wrongly omitted? And which of today’s stories will be considered the classics of the future?

Our panellists include writer Jan Carson, co-editor of A Little Unsteadily Into Light, Paul Delaney, author of Anthologisation and Irish Short Fiction, and Hedwig Schwall, founder of EFACIS and commissioning editor for multiple series of Irish short fiction. 

Meet the Panelists

Born in Belfast in 1981, Lucy Caldwell is the author of four novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and three previous collections of short stories. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018, she was also the editor of Being Various: New Irish Short Stories in 2019, and has won the E. M. Forster Award, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Walter Scott Prize among others.

Jan Carson is a writer based in Belfast. She has published three novels, three short story collections and two micro-fiction collections. Her novel The Fire Starters won the EU Prize for Literature for Ireland 2019. Jan’s latest novel, The Raptures was published by Doubleday in early 2022 and was subsequently shortlisted for the An Post Irish Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year. Her short story collection Quickly, While They Still Have Horses was published by Doubleday (UK) in April 2024 and Scribner (US) in July 2024. Her writing has been aired on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and RTE. She is the Seamus Heaney Centre Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast 2025 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her first stage play, an adaptation of the children’s classic, The Velveteen Rabbit has been produced by Replay Theatre Company at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast in March 2025. Her next novel, Few and Far Between is forthcoming in April 2026.

Paul Delaney is Associate Professor in the School of English and a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of Anthologisation and Irish Short Fiction: Magnitudes of Telling (2025) and Seán O’Faoláin: Literature, Inheritance and the 1930s (2014). His other books include the edited collections David Marcus: Editing Ireland, with Deirdre Madden (2024), The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English (2019), with Adrian Hunter, William Trevor: Revaluations (2013), with Michael Parker, and Reading Colm Tóibín (2008). He also co-edited the short story anthology Dublin Tales (2023), with Eve Patten.

Hedwig Schwall is professor emerita with formal duties at KU Leuven. ORCID: 0000-0002-3706-8215. Her research focuses on psychoanalytic approaches to European art and contemporary Irish literature. As Project director of the European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies (EFACIS) she edits the Kaleidoscope series On the art of writing (2019 with an extended version in book form, The Danger and the Glory Arlen House); Europe in Ireland, | Kaleidoscope II (efacis.eu) (2022), and is now preparing Faith, spirituality and art: new perspectives for the twenty-first century (2026). She is on the editorial board of several journals of Irish literature, and co-editor of the series Irish Studies in Europe (ISE).