NIALL SIMON

Writing & Literature

2023

I try to write tender and intimate stories that reflect the human condition while also vividly describing a scene. My recurring themes are identity, masculinity, love, and loneliness. Currently, I am working on a story about an isolated young man who feels stagnant in his west of Ireland home. Jack Kerouac is an inspiration and his use of roman à clef is something I have adapted to my own stories. Other inspirations are Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Charles Bukowski. As a child I struggled in school and sport due to health problems I was born with. This sense of isolation and feeling different to the rest of the boys in school is something I have embraced in my life and has become a strong component of my work. My writing explores possibilities for young Irish men and exposes the limitations of toxic masculinity.

Excerpt from Red Sky at Night

So, I packed my things, throwing all into the back of my Golf, and drove the three hour teary-eyed drive to Sligo, a town I had long since turned my back on with the coming of Anna to my life.

Now, a week later, I sat in McCool’s pub, waiting for my old friend Ray to arrive in. I had not been in Cool’s for a long time, but I could see no changes to the place: the blinds entirely down, patrons dashed by the slits of light piercing through; yellow tungsten bulbs created moody shadow, and the light in the far-left corner still quivered; the same creased faces and dark sunken eyes occupied the bar with mad John Swift still sat at the cheap fruity machine, a flat pint of muddy Carling beside him, pressing those buttons with all the hope in the world. Sitting directly under the glow of the cheap warm bulb, I felt like a hare in a wolf’s den. Finally, Ray arrived in and I saw those lightbulb blue eyes that were so synonymous with him. He took my hand in his, those coarse gravel palms scratching my soft boyish mitt.