iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

I love this essay so so much (Sophie Corser in @thepigsback.bsky.social)

An open copy of issue 7 of literary magazine The Pig’s Back. First page of the essay “No Need to Respond” by Sophie Corser:

“Not long ago, I travelled from the UK to Northampton, Massachusetts, to look at over sixty folders full of fanmail. Alison Bechdel-American cartoonist, creator of the Bechdel test, and author of three graphic memoirs and the comic series Dykes to Watch Out For-has given Smith College Libraries hundreds of letters from her fans, received between 1984 and 2021. So, I spent a week with Bechdel's readers.

Bechdel invites fanmail: on her long-running blog she still lists a PO box address and states she's happy to receive snail-mail. For a time she sold artwork to her fans directly via mail, and by her own admission was once seduced by a fan's letter. But I didn't go to Massachusetts to learn more about Bechdel. I went to think about, or imagine, a community of readers. A kind of collective reception.

I made the trip at quite a difficult time. It was the last week of May 2023, and I was apprehensive about the months to come. Early June”

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Raven Books @ravenbooks.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

Now in stock!

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Sonya Gildea @sonyagildea.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

The Pig's Back Dublin Launch ISSUE # 7 @booksupstairs.bsky.social last night with @thepigsback.bsky.social co-editors Dean Fee & Emily Cooper. Hosted by Louisa of Books Upstairs, With celebratory readings from Issue #7 and # 6💫

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Ordered @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social and @johannawinant.bsky.social’s freshly published Close Reading for the 21st Century to our library and pre-ordered next issue of @thepigsback.bsky.social (with an essay by Sophie Corser!!) - great day for anticipatory reading joy www.thepigsback.ie/shop/p/issue...

thepigsback.ie

Issue Seven — The Pig's Back

Featuring writing from Sophie Corser, Wendy Erskine, Rosa Mäkelä, Dara McWade, Laura Morris, Nicole Morris and Odrán Waldron.

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Issue Seven of The Pig's Back is now available for pre-order. Featuring new writing from Sophie Corser, Wendy Erskine, Rosa Mäkelä, Dara McWade, Laura Morris, Nicole Morris and Odrán Waldron.

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Tim Groenland @groenbot.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

The inaugural Dublin Small Press Fair is happening at the end of November! 30+ presses, events, readings, and more. Organised by me and @eireannmor.bsky.social. More information coming very soon - follow @dublinsmpressfair.bsky.social for updates

Flyer for the Dublin Small Press Fair, 28/29 November, Pearse Steeet Library

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

🐷 End of Summer Sale 🐷 For the next week we have up to 30% off select back issues on our website. There are literally only 1 or 2 of some of these left. So if you’re short one to fill the set (so far), get yourself over to our website before they sell out for good.

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

"I was seventeen years old, pale as pasta water and about to carry out what would become the most elaborate sting operation ever seen in the history of Xtra-Vision video rental, main street, Tipperary Town, Ireland." — Dove Sta Memoria: My Brain on Video Games, Paul Whyte

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

"Peter had told me they couldn’t get you off the mountain—something about money, and you being too heavy. I didn’t get it. I remembered how he used to pick you up like you were a sack of potatoes." — Snow White, Kathy Stevens

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Our editor Emily is running an 8-week non-fiction editing course with the Irish Writer's Centre. "Each week we will workshop the participants’ work-in-progress with a focus on peer feedback, editing and structure, with the aim of building self-editing skills."

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

"The woman at reception smiles like nothing bad has ever happened to her. She leads us around the retreat centre with such pride that you would think she built it with her bare hands." — Saturn Return, Kerry Mahony

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Tim Groenland @groenbot.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

For the Irish Itinerary Podcast (@efacis.bsky.social), I had a fun chat with Dean Fee and Emily Cooper of @thepigsback.bsky.social about their editing of the magazine, Irish literary journals and the Journals Fleadh, and their own writing: www.efacis.eu/podcast

Image for The Irish Itinerary Podcast Episode 60, Emily Cooper & Dean Fee in conversation with Tim Groenland.

Additional info: In their conversation with Tim Groenland, Emily Cooper and Dean Fee discuss the origins of their literary journal, The Pig’s Back, designed as a Donegal-based journal with an international bent. They talk about creating not only an issue, but a beautiful object that stays in people’s minds; blurring fiction and non-fiction; bringing the many literary journals in Ireland together at the Journals Fleadh; and what being edited has thought them as writers and editors.

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

"Though Martin often watches home improvement shows and Netflix documentaries about bludgeoned women in bed on his laptop, he doesn’t believe there is any place for a television in an adult’s apartment." — 'I could not have written this without you' by Sam Furlong.

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Banshee Press @bansheepress.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

Issue 19 (spring/summer 2025) is gone to print! View the contents and pre-order your copy at the link in bio 😎 bansheepress.org/shop/p/issue...

bansheepress.org

Issue 19 | Spring/Summer 2025 — Banshee Press

128 pages ISSN: 2009-857X ISBN: 978-1-917161-17-6

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

'My father had said a lot of quotable things over his lifetime: 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑑, or 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜 𝑝𝑜𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑎 𝑠ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑑. “None of these are head stone appropriate,” I said to him.' — from Land Eats You by Laura Fitzgerald

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

"He thought Susan was a good girl, but foolish and in need of protection. He remembered her appearance on the day he arrested her: sweating, pale and aching in the septic ward of the Sparkhill Women’s Hospital." — 'I am not going to punish you', Máiréad Enright.

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

🐷SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN🐷 Send us your best essays and short fiction. Window closes at the end of the month and once again, please read the guidelines. thepigsback.ie/submit

thepigsback.ie

Submit — The Pig's Back

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

"I know that it's safer for children to walk to and from school in daylight; that there might be tear gas and harassment, but there are also witnesses. In the dark, it is more difficult to see, the soldiers and settlers are less watched and children can go missing."

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

🐷SUBMISSIONS 🐷 The submission window for our next issue will open between the 15th and the 30th April. We're looking for your best essays and short fiction. Please read the guidelines before submitting. thepigsback.ie/submit

thepigsback.ie

Submit — The Pig's Back

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Máiréad Enright @maireadenright.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

I was lucky enough to participate in this last year, and would recommend it to anyone. (One of the pieces I workshopped is coming out in the new @thepigsback.bsky.social, and the open supportive atmosphere Arnold created helped give me the confidence to submit it. So now.).

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

🐷 Issue Six 🐷 is back from the printers and will be dropping in through letterboxes and into the best bookshops in the next few days. Featuring new work from Emily Iseult Duggan, Máiréad Enright, Laura Fitzgerald, Sam Furlong, Kerry Mahony, Kathy Stevens and Paul Whyte.

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Issue Six of The Pig's Back is now available for pre-order. Featuring essays and fiction from Emily Iseult Duggan, Máiréad Enright (@maireadenright.bsky.social), Laura Fitzgerald, Sam Furlong (@samfurlong.bsky.social), Kerry Mahony, Kathy Stevens (@kathystevens91.bsky.social) and Paul Whyte.🐷 Link 👇

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Morgan L. Ventura (they/she) @morganvl.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

We love to see it @samfurlong.bsky.social 🐷 💚 🔥

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Máiréad Enright @maireadenright.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Very pleased about this.

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

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Raven Books @ravenbooks.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Spoiled for choice with quality Irish Literary Journals, love to see them getting the attention they deserve

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Lucy Holme @lucyrebeccaholme.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Hi, I have a new nonfiction essay collection entitled Blue Diagonals from @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social featuring essays from brilliant Irish journals such as Banshee, Southword, The Pig’s back, and more. You can find out more below 🔭💛 www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...

brokensleepbooks.com

Lucy Holme - Blue Diagonals | Broken Sleep Books

Blue Diagonals by Lucy Holme is an intimate and powerful exploration of love, loss, and healing. Holme's evocative prose transports the reader through a landscape of raw emotion, drawing on personal h...

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Rick O'Shea @rickoshea.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

I've had this column planned for a while. I hope it brings nothing but curious new subscribers to Ireland's brilliant literary journals. In tomorrow's @irishindependent.bsky.social Review section or at www.independent.ie/entertainmen... right now...

independent.ie

Rick O’Shea: Buying a gift for a choosy reader? I know just the thing

When I was seven or eight, my grandmother started buying me a copy of Commando comic every week because I had picked it up one Saturday when I had been out with her. She didn’t realise that later the ...

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Claire Carroll 🌊🌊 @ccrrll.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

I'm horribly biased, for reasons that will become clear when you read the piece, but this does actually go very hard. Eternally proud of this lad. 🚌🚬🌊

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Gary Grace @gary-grace.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Ti's myself... Thank you @thepigsback.bsky.social

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

"We look comical together, Kenny and I. He looks like Father Karras, the priest in The Exorcist, only better looking. Smiling but serious. I look like a reject from Good Charlotte." — The Woman in the Water, Gary Grace (@gary-grace.bsky.social)

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The Stinging Fly @stingingfly.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Hello BSky! T-4 hours before our submissions widow closes: Today at 5pm (Irish time). All guidelines and link to the Submission Form is available below. stingingfly.org/submissions/

stingingfly.org

Submissions – The Stinging Fly

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

"For the pop star, happiness was not a philosophical state of being, but rather a kind of fleeting physical sensation, something like the lack of worry, or more accurately, maybe, the absence of irritation." —The Pop Star, Alexandra Ye

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

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Sinéad Gleeson @sineadgleeson.bsky.social · 10/11/2023

A group of Irish writers and Irish Artists for Palestine have organised four events - in Dublin, Belfast, Galway and Cork - with readings and music to raise money for Medical Aid for Palestine. Tickets for three shows (Cork is sold out) on sale Monday,10am. Details here: linktr.ee/writersforpa...

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 04/11/2023

We're pleased to announce Issue Four of The Pig's Back. Featuring writing from Lucy Holme, Ella Gaynor, Eamon McGuinness, Shane Murphy, Nathan O'Donnell, Sarah Pazur and Kathryn Scanlan. Now available for pre-order. Link below! 🐷

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 24/10/2023

With Issue Four just around the corner, we thought we'd share some work from the current issue. Grace Banks’s brilliant short story Direct Message is now available for free online. Social media, obsession, and leaning into what brings you joy. thepigsback.ie/read/direct-message

thepigsback.ie

Direct Message — The Pig's Back

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 24/10/2023

thepigsback.ie

Direct Message — The Pig's Back

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 15/10/2023

Reminder that the submission window for Issue Five will close at midnight tonight. So you've a few hours to get your pieces in. Full guidelines here: www.thepigsback.ie/submit

thepigsback.ie

Submit — The Pig's Back

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 01/10/2023

Submissions for Issue Five are now open. Closing date is midnight Oct 15th. We're seeking the best non-fiction and short stories from anywhere in the world. More info here: thepigsback.ie/submit

thepigsback.ie

Submit — The Pig's Back

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Tolka @tolkajournal.bsky.social · 28/09/2023

We're delighted to announce the line-up for Tolka Issue Six, publishing in November, featuring the very best non-fiction, conversations and translations from Ireland and elsewhere. Including @sineadgleeson.bsky.social & @liamcagney.bsky.social! Pre-order here: www.tolkajournal.org/shop/p/issue...

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The Pig's Back @thepigsback.bsky.social · 27/09/2023

Submissions for Issue Five will over on October 1st and close at midnight on October 15th. We'd love to read your best fiction and essays. More info here: thepigsback.ie/submit

thepigsback.ie

Submit — The Pig's Back

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