Galway City native Conor Montague will return to his hometown next Friday, 3 November to launch his debut collection of short fiction, Capital Vices, at Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop.
Published by Reflex Press on 22 September, Capital Vices, has garnered exclusively five-star reviews on Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles, receiving glowing praise from leading Irish writers such as Mike McCormack, who said that Montague writes “with a direct, visceral poetry” and that “this whole collection is the work of a born storyteller”.
Capital Vices is an eclectic mix, reflective of Montague’s many past lives – he has been everything from a bare-knuckle fighter to an academic – and extensive travel experience.
In these stories we meet a backpacker in India admiring the integrity of cockroaches; an amputee who hustles a biker gang in the last chance saloon; a Connemara girl who discovers the magic of poitín; The Bat Man who saves lives on a Thai beach; how Santa Claus ruins a Galway Christmas; and the U.S. marine decides to assassinate Donald Trump in order to
save America.
Conor is a graduate of the MA in Writing at what was then NUI Galway and is currently the resident playwright at the Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith, where he facilitates workshops in playwriting and fiction.
Galway audiences will remember Conor’s Who Needs Enemies series of plays which sold out at the Town Hall Theatre; The Chain, a commissioned piece, sold out at the Inishbofin Arts Festival in April; and Chasing Reindeer, shortlisted for the Platform Presents Playwright’s Prize and Druid Theatre New Writing is currently in development with a London Theatre.
‘Nothing to be Done’, a short film adapted from one of the prize-winning stories in Capital Vices, was an official selection at this year’s Galway Film Fleadh, and was highly commended at the Offline Film Festival in October. It is scheduled to be screened at multiple film festivals over the coming months.
Other stories in the collection have been shortlisted for The Bridport Prize, the V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize, The Hammond House International Literary Award, The Seán O’Faoláin International Short Story Competition, and The Fish Prize.
Conor Montague will launch Capital Vices in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Middle Street, on Friday 3 November at 6.30pm. Admission is free and all are welcome.
