The Stories We Tell: Kathryn Scanlan & Wendy Erskine

Join us for an illuminating conversation on how different stories are shaped and formed, hosted by Declan Meade, founding editor and publisher of The Stinging Fly. 

Winner of the Gordon Burn Prize, Kathryn Scanlan is known for her boundary-breaking fiction including The Dominant Animal, Kick the Latch and the new UK edition of Aug 9 – Fog (Book Works, 2025). 

Belfast writer Wendy Erskine is the multi-award-winning author of two short-story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move, published by The Stinging Fly, and the daring, polyphonic novel The Benefactors (Sceptre, 2025).

Ticket holders for The Stinging Fly’s workshop, Write So! (Friday 6 June 10am-3pm), will also have access to this event. Click here for more information about the workshop.

Kathryn Scanlan is the author of The Dominant Animal (Daunt, 2020), Kick the Latch (Daunt, 2023) and the new UK edition of Aug 9 – Fog (Book Works, 2025). Originally from Iowa, she lives in Los Angeles.

Wendy Erskine is the author of two short story collections, Sweet Home and Dance Move. She was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize, longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and she received the Butler Literary Award and the Edge Hill Readers' Choice Award. She edited the art anthology, well I just kind of like it. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is a frequent broadcaster and interviewer, and works as a secondary school teacher in Belfast. The Benefactors is her debut novel.

Declan Meade is founding editor and publisher of The Stinging Fly magazine and has been been editing and publishing books for The Stinging Fly Press since 2005, most recently the anthology Dublin, Written In Our Hearts and the short-story collection Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuinn.