Ragtag Giggagon

PJ Webb 's Lora Lee opens with an aspiring author - the eponymous teenager living in South Carolina in 1922 - seeking the approval of the local elderly newspaper editor. Her best friend, Amanda, would probably be diagnosed bi-polar today, often bed-ridden with depression. Lora Lee is herself plagued by a recurring dream. Her brother, Riley - a handsome chap two years her senior - initiates a clandestine affair with Amanda. With dashes of Gothic - both Southern and Victorian - Webb lays out the opening pages of a superb yarn involving blazing homesteads, orphanages, murders and suicides in the opening chapters. This ghost story is well-made horror. You can buy Lora Lee now ! PJ Webb's author page on Amazon can be viewed here !

Letter To those who voted for Trump: People are PRAYING that Trump will be a good president. There are statements floating around like this too: "Name-calling instead of respectful debate is not right. It's wrong to harm other people, regardless of how you personally feel." When people have accused Obama for eight years of treason, or of being Satan, or being disgusting, or of being a liar, or of being like Hitler, what do his opponents who NOW WANT TO RESPECTFULLY DEBATE, actually hear ? Are these fair descriptors of the man? Comparisons to HITLER? You think you can stand alongside people who draw these disgusting comparisons for eight years, and white supremacists, after voting in a racist xenophobe, and now the Left is going to be REASONABLE while YOUR post-Patriot-Act civil and data protection rights - and whatever else - continue to be dismantled? Your own freedoms will be undermined by the reactionary cabal you voted in, which is regarded by many as the most right-

Tony Devlin dons his specs to begin his reading “Flask Orphans” – a piece of flash fiction from Tony Devlin – is a descriptive Rise of the Machines type piece (with clones rather than robots), and contains echoes of Children-of-the-Corn type beings with “indulgent, vaguely unsettled smiles”. It was one great piece among dozens that were performed by a number of spoken word artists on the second Saturday in October.  Devlin read the piece in Tallaght Library at an event named after a cat. Kenneth Nolan has been running the Merg sessions once a month for almost a year. Tallaght Library has given its blessing to run again in 2017. “The Merg Sessions is named in honour of my cat Merg,” Kenneth explained. “When I sit down at my laptop to write, Merg comes and sits beside me on the arm of the chair. Out of pure silliness I got into the habit of reciting my work to Merg (as a writer who performs, we are always encouraged to read our work aloud). For my own amusement I would take her meows a