Pig tales

INSIDE STORY

INSIDE STORY: A companion piece to a visual arts exhibition celebrating a patron saint has somehow morphed into Ireland’s newest literary magazine. DEAN FEE, the Bailieborough man at the helm, tells DAMIAN MCCARNEY about the genesis of The Pig’s Back, the ‘weird journey’ of his own writing career and why artists shouldn’t have to move to Dublin to find a creative outlet...

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Things are going “well enough” by Bailieborough’s Dean Fee own reckoning. His nascent writing career has piqued the interest of a literary agent, he’s busy writing two books, and excitingly, he is editing Ireland’s newest literary magazine. ‘The Pig’s Back’ has emerged organically from Donegal’s artistic celebrations of the 1,500 year anniversary of the birth of St Colmcille. Organically, and a little haphazardly.

A series of art exhibitions had already been in the pipeline for ‘The Regional Culture Centre’ in Letterkenny, and one of its organisers approached Dean with an idea.

“He asked me would I know anybody who would be interested in supplying a literary element – writing a few essays or something like that, short pieces: not necessarily about Colmcille, but about the theme ‘Journeys’ - turas in Irish.

“I did know a few people in the writing world and put the feelers out; I got five people back.”

No sooner than the stories were submitted, the pandemic hit and “everything went hay wire”.

“It didn’t necessarily fall the way we wanted it, and then we were left with these five stories and the exhibition was half cancelled and spread out for too long.”

Dean and his girlfriend, Derry native and poet and writer Emily Cooper, had only moved to the picturesque Ramelton village, north of Letterkenny, a few months before lockdown. Dean came up with plan B, and the Pig’s Back was born.

“We just said f*ck it, sure we’ll throw a literary journal together, get a good designer in and create something that looks really good. It all fell into place over the last year or so,” he recalls.

Named after Muckish, a great big grunt of a mountain visible during Dean’s lockdown strolls, the magazine’s 1970s style cover design evokes its distinctive flat back shape.

Dean has set a benchmark with the quality of essays and short stories in issue one. The writers it brings together - Will Carruthers, Molly Hennigan, Roisin Kiberd, Darragh McCausland and Tim MacGabhann - might not be household names, but they are all deeply respected within literary circles.

“I definitely wouldn’t be able to pick a favourite but the one that affected me the most was probably Darragh’s. Though it deals with difficult topics, it does so with clean, crisp prose, creating an affect that both chills you to the bone and keeps you wanting more.”

Dean envisages putting the magazine out twice annually, and maybe the occasional special edition - an Irish or poetry issue are options he has in mind.

Again he’s eager to not be too prescriptive with themes. “Once we go through all the submissions and if a theme pops its head up then, maybe we’ll focus more in,” he says, adding they might go with stories which “work well together”.

While issue one may only have five stories, it still weighs in at a substantial 80 pages.

“We want something you can pick up and it’s not too imposing on you, you’re not going, ‘Jesus there’s 50 stories in this, I won’t be able to read all this’. We want something like, five stories - you can handle that. Maybe in a night or two you might go through the five of them and get a unique experience that only lasts for the day or two, and has a bit more meaning to it.”

While The Pig’s Back magazine is rooted in Donegal, however Dean sees it as having an audience beyond Tír Chonaill.

“That’s the aim. And the writers aren’t actually Donegal natives. A couple of stories are set in Donegal, but we’ve Will Carruthers, he’s a musician from England, we’ve Roisin Kiberd from Dublin, Darragh McCausland is from Kells - so we’re already spreading the net. We don’t want it to be only be a local magazine – we want it to spread the net and kind of bring people to Donegal.”

This chimes with Dean’s introduction to the first issue, which contains an inspiring mission statement:

‘With The Pig’s Back the RCC will continue to establish Donegal and the northwest as a place where the highest standard of writing lives. Not just a breeding ground for talent waiting to leave, but one where literature is nurtured and respected.

He sighs, “Everything’s in Dublin at moment. And if you want to go to a book launch, to travel from Donegal, you spend half the day on the road – by the time you get there, you’re the only in the door, and you have to go out again.

“I know it’s difficult to get to Donegal as well,” he laughingly concedes. “It’s a bit far out.”

“We kind of want to set Donegal as a hub, bringing in writers from all over Ireland and international writers as well if we can – we’d like to spread it out.

“We have the submissions opening next month – that will be open to anybody in the world. If it has a Donegal slant to it, that’s all the better but we’re not too restrictive.”

Of course Cavan’s own literary magazine The Moth has already shown it’s possible to create an exquisite publication attracting the top writers and exciting visual artists, all from a rural base.

“There’s writers and artists and creative people all over the country. You see it at your kitchen table with people telling stories. I’m here at home for a few days and the amount of stories I’ve heard is just unbelievable. They could all write them down and make a fortune if they wanted to, but they don’t think they can do it – ‘I wouldn’t be able to do that’. But sure they’re telling stories every day.

“I don’t see the reason for leaving – to Dublin, England or the States. Sure it’s in your back yard you don’t have leave to set up a community. That’s me saying that and I’m from Cavan living up in Donegal now!”

As with the magazine, his writing career had a stuttering gestation. Although his interest in writing has always been there and he “messed about” with stories in his youth, Dean had a circuitous route into pursuing writing seriously - or “a weird journey” as he puts it. Leaving school he initially pursued animation in college.

“I could never really stick with anything or finish courses out,” he admits.

He then worked as a carpenter for a couple of years with his dad, who is in the trade in Dundalk.

“Then I started getting into the writing a bit more and gave myself a couple of years, and if it didn’t work out then I’d go back to being a carpenter. I went to NUIG, and studied English and Philosophy there for three years. The older I got the more I took it seriously.

Excelling second time around in college he progressed to a Masters in Writing and Editing.

“And after the Masters I started getting short stories accepted in places like the Dublin Review and The Stinging Fly, big enough literary journals in Ireland.

“It kind of all went on from there, and I’m starting to establish myself. I’ve got an agent, I’m editing the magazine. It’s still early days yet, but it’s going well enough.”

Dean was recently long-listed for the DRF Award (Deborah Roberts Foundation) run by the RCW Agency, which opened the door to him meeting an agent who, happily, saw Dean’s potential and took him on.

So what’s first, the Celt enquires, a short story collection or novel?

“She has me working hard with a short story collection and the first 50 pages of a novel so she can try to sell it to publishers. The idea there is, you don’t just sell a collection on its own or a novel on its own. You almost have to go for a two book deal.”

He’s reportedly in the polishing stages for the opening to the novel, and has a dozen short stories “ready to go”.

Many of his short stories have already featured in respected literary magazines, and as such have already gone through a rigorous editing process under the expert scrutiny of such people as Brendan Barrington of the Dublin Review.

“He’s an amazing editor, seeing how he works with writers is inspiring – it’s unreal. So I’ve taken a nod from him when I was doing the Pig’s Back.

“Having seen it from the other side he’s mindful of what a writer needs from an editor too.

“You’re just trying to fix whatever problems you see in someone else’s story, but you can’t be telling them what to do either. You can’t say: ‘You should do this’. You have to say: ‘Maybe, you could consider this. That’s my main ethos now, it’s not to tell anybody what to do, and just try to guide them into making something that would be memorable.”

He reports the writers featured in issue one were receptive to editorial input.

“Most people you work with are a hundred per cent and they know you need to be flexible.”

However, while those writers are well versed in the expectations of literary magazines, he’s eager for the magazine to provide a platform to introduce voices that have yet to find a nurturing ear. As such the Pig’s Back will be open for submissions and anybody will be able to send in pieces.

Having been through the process himself, Dean appreciates how valuable a literary journal can be for an emerging writer.

“That’s kind of the hope of the magazine in the first place: we want to find new writers. We don’t want to be publishing people who get published all of the time and are easy to work with. I want to find new writers and show them what it’s like to work at a professional level - show them what it’s like to work with an editor and how to be flexible. If you can’t be flexible, then no one’s going to want to work with you in the future either. I’ve heard horror stories from editors: people saying, ‘I don’t want to do any edits on this publish – you either publish it as it is or not at all’.

“They’re just going to tell you to go away.”

The Pig’s Back - Issue One can be pre-ordered from: www.thepigsback.ie See the website also for details on how to make a submission for issue 2.