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Scottish novelist Iain Banks - author of the awesome cult classic The Wasp Factory - has announced that he has terminal stage gall bladder cancer. Katie McDermott has written a personal article for TMO explaining exactly why his writing has been so important to her.

This week the Irish Government will publish a report on the workings of the Magdalene Laundries - infamous institutions run by the Catholic Church which kept ‘fallen women’ in their ‘care’, all the while working for those institutions gratis.

William Wall writes about the economy behind the laundries (the last of which only closed in 1996 - so it’s important to remind ourselves that this system wasn’t just a product of the dark days of the 1950s in Ireland).

The horrific evidence of sexual and physical abuse tends to dominate talk of these institutions. But in some ways this tends to obscure the abuse of slavery or servitude itself, even though it is insisted upon by the survivors who habitually describe themselves as having been slaves. While the physical and sexual abuse was widespread, the slavery or servitude was universal. Every poor boy or girl who found himself or herself in the tender care of Mother Church became a slave or an indentured servant, whether it was because of her parents’ inability to support them, because a social worker or a judge or a doctor consigned them there, or simply by being born within the walls of a Magdalene laundry. The ‘Maggies’ were slaves and could expect to spend their useful working lives inside. 

Meat Deboner is a short story by Aingeal Clare, part of TMO’s new original fiction and poetry section. Read the full story here

They’re looking for meat deboners at the processing site in Paull, a coastal village ringed by chemical plants and vacancies, so I fill in my slip and waft it towards the receptionist at my agency. She puts it in her out-tray without looking and without raising her head, and she doesn’t smile. “You’ll not need the code, for my file?” I ask. She tells me no, it’s not been policy since the take-over, and her eyes are flickering and green in the light of her onscreen solitaire.

The Roses on the Wall is a short story, written by Miriam Foley. It’s the first in a series of original short stories that we’re publishing as part of our new ‘original fiction and poetry’ section.

TMO magazine is  looking for poetry and short story submissions for our new original fiction and poetry section. If you’re an aspiring writer looking for an audience, check us out.

Interesting article, about Tony Small, an escaped slave who came to live in Ireland in the 1780s, fromn the brilliant Come Here To Me Now site

One figure associated with Edward Fitzgerald I’ve been fascinated by for a while now is Tony Small, an escaped slave Fitzgerald encountered in the United States who he later employed as a personal assistant. Small became a frequent sight around Dublin in the 1780s and 1790s, in a city where coloured men were few and far between.

Criminally overlooked, Mervyn Wall’s The Unfortunate Fursey, written in the 1940’s is a brilliant mix of satire and fantasy - two difficult genres at the best of times. It’s the story of  a medieval Irish monastery under siege by the forces of darkness, who find their breach in the cell of the unfortunate brother Fursey, a monk blessed with a stammer who thus can’t adequately perform the rites of exorcism required to keep the monastery safe. 

Find out more here