Eimear Ryan

jen getting murder tips from a 9 year old girl I CANNOT 💀 💀 💀

later that day:

We’re thrilled that Louise Kennedy has been longlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award for ‘Sparing the Heather’, her incredible story from Banshee issue #8. You can read an extract from ‘Sparing the Heather’ here.

I

Breakfast consists of a plate of blackened comal-fried eggs and beans flavoured with those ever-present, anti-flatulence leaves of epazote. An ancient woman sells me some tepache on the roadside and I alternate gulps of that with the sweet coffee that comes free with the eggs. A familiar fizzle and rumble in the gut follows – caffeine mingling with the fermented juices of the hacked skin of a pineapple. Warm liquids darkening each other on the way down. Slow explosions of vapour must have risen from behind the hills and blotted out the sun while I slept. I look around to see myself breakfasting inside a cloud and, from the steps of a wooden shack, being spied upon by a kitten, a dog and a duckling.

II

First time in San José was with you. Spaghetti and cacao-infused mezcal at the Italian restaurant and, later, a small family of mushrooms. We were nervous and thought we’d been conned until, with the rain pelting down on our cabin and the fire blazing, the floorboards began to move. A state of euphoria, an injected brown sugar, danced through the bloodstreams for a while before dying. Tired of leaning through the mirror I stood on the balcony and stared at the charcoal trees. Just a day before I’d read how the eye works by continually moving. If you grab your eyelids to prevent the natural activity of instinctive twitching and look straight ahead, your vision will disappear – you are left with a grey blindness. On the wooden balcony, staring into the forest, I tried to do it myself without touching my eyelids. The dilated pupils lay dead still and a dark blur began to form around the edges of my vision like an early photograph. All that was left was a conifer that slowly dissolved before me, leaving me standing cold in the void.

We asked our contributors and editors to share their favourite reads of the year, with a focus on short pieces: 

Chris Beausang (fiction, issue #9)

In 2019 I liked in no particular order:

James Tates’ prose poem ‘Goodtime Jesus’ available here for some reason, otherwise available in Jeremy Noel-Tod’s newish Penguin Book of the Prose Poem.

‘Procedure’ by D.M. Lynch in Minor Literature[s].

Édourard Louis’ ’The Pain Never Went Away’ in the New York Review of Books.

Laura Cassidy (editor)

No one writes about the interplay of music and emotion quite like Hanif Abdurraqib, so predictably I loved his 2019 Paris Review column, Notes on Pop, especially the June offering ‘On Summer Crushing’.

It’s tempting to list everything from the summer issue of The Stinging Fly, but I’ll stick to the breathtaking ‘Small Yellow Spider’ from featured poet Dean Browne. 

And Kelly Link’s Advice to Debut Authors was priceless.   

Christmas is nearly upon us (six weeks to go!) but never fear, we have some great gift ideas for the reader on your list:

Banshee Christmas stocking: Paris Syndrome by Lucy Sweeney Byrne, the current autumn/winter issue, two back issues of your choice, a Banshee tote bag and a Banshee postcard with your message

Banshee bundle: Three back issues of your choice and a tote bag

Banshee subscription: One or two years available

People Matching Artworks: An Unusual Photo Series By Stefan Draschan

Happy publication day to Paris Syndrome, the exceptional debut collection of stories from Lucy Sweeney Byrne. Available now in all good bookshops (pictured above at Hodges Figgis!) and from our website.