Culture Night (1) September 19th

Niall Duff read from his novel in progress.
Philip St John read from his novel, "Crazy Baldheads".

Phyl Herbert made her reading debut with a short story.

Culture Night (2)

Members of the UCD Young Irish Writers' Group with Sixteen After Ten alumni.

Mary Turley-McGrath (from the Mayo/Roscommon border).

More Photos from Culture Night September 19th

Andrew Fox read an excerpt from "Couch".
Carmen Cullen read from her novel, "Two Sisters Singing".
Emily Firetog

Day of the Launch

The launch of the book is today, in the Long Room (Old Library) @ Trinity College Dublin, followed by an after-party at Bruxelles bar (downstairs) on Grafton Street & Harry Street, from 8:30 onwards. The launch itself is invite-only, the after-party is come one, come all.

The book is now available for purchase in several fine-establishments around Dublin. Pick it up at Books Upstairs, the Winding Stair, the University Bookshop (Old Library Building in Trinity), Hodges-Figgis, Reads, Chapters, and more. At only €9.99, it's a steal of a deal, so get yours while they're still available.

The train is pulling into the station

The book went to the printing press 2 weeks ago, and the finished copies should be pulling in tomorrow. I'll let you know if a spanner gets thrown into the works between now and then, but God willing (since God has his irons in many fires, even literary ones), we should have a tall stack of books in the Oscar Wilde Centre containing our names and words. Check here for a list of bookshops who will be carrying Sixteen After Ten.

In publicity news, the Irish Times ran a piece last Saturday which you can read about here. It's about the Oscar Wilde Centre in general, and mentions our upcoming release in passing. There will be more press and publicity to follow, so please stay tuned.

The launch is almost a week away, so if you've been invited and haven't RSVP'ed yet, please do so NOW! If you've got any questions about the launch, the release, the book or its availability, please email sixteenafterten@gmail.com. The date draws nigh, the celebration will be massive, the book will be yours.

Prove it!

First set of proofs (final laid-out text in proper book form) arrived from the publishers yesterday. Today and tomorrow is just the final final final reading (there will be a final final final final reading next week) for spacing and punctuation errors by the typesetters, of which there are a fair amount. These corrections go back to the typesetters, then the final draft goes to the printer, where it'll be pressed and bound.

Pretty soon, I can stop posting about how we're still looking at and rereading the material, and start talking about critical reception and whatnot. Though I haven't seen it yet, apparently the 'Loose Leaves' section of this Saturday's Irish Times had a mention about the upcoming release of Sixteen After Ten. Yay, we made the paper.

Here's a peep at what the cover will look something like. Stay tuned.

It's in the mail

Small-scale mass-mailing of invitations today to friends and family. Just to make it known in more places, the launch date is April 18th, 2008, at 6 pm in the Long Room, Old Library, at Trinity College Dublin. Launch is by invite only, but chances are, if you are reading this, you are receiving an invitation in the mail. Contact sixteenafterten@gmail.com if you have any questions about the big kick-off.

Our most fabulous classmate Mark Stewart is going to be the emcee for the evening. I can't think of a more charismatic speaker, so he'll bring a real sense of electricity to the evening. Gerald Dawe will also be contributing words to the evening, and don't forget about the extra-special mystery guest.

The authors of Sixteen After Ten were taken on a bus journey around Dublin on a windy winter morning. As usual, no one was missing, and the atmosphere was that of a school trip. Here they are, waiting for the bus to arrive, struggling to wake up!

The Long Room

The other day Ruth and I went to the Long Room (where the launch for Sixteen After Ten will be) for a walk through with Trinity's Communications Director. Charlie came as our official blogger, but you're not supposed to take pictures in there. He was able to get one illicit shot before he was captured and dragged off by the Gardai. Thanks Charlie!

The Waiting Game

Earlier this week, the final text went to the typesetter for, well, typesetting. This is a good, big thing, meaning that for once, it's thankfully not in our control and we can just wait until they do their job. We'll get proofs back, and after making sure those are correct, the big run (1,000 copies) will start getting printed and bound. Unveiling of the cover is just around the corner, so stay tuned.

I've been instructed specifically not to mention this, but I of course can't contain myself. There will be a mystery guest of honor at the launch, which for some reason must not be revealed at this point, but people in the know will be quite impressed by the stature of this person, who hopefully will be able to add a few words during the launching gala. Excitement can commence.

Superday

Yesterday (Thursday, 28 Feb 2008) can go down in the books as one of the great teamwork efforts of the modern era. The whole gang met up in the Oscar Wilde Centre for a serious, honest-to-goodness, last-ditch session of Final editing. The stories are done like T-bone steaks, the final ordering of pieces is decided, and within a couple days the work will be off to the designer/layout/printing stages of the operation (out of our hands!). We all put in some serious labour (as you can see evidenced by me in the last picture...a 9-letter word for young lad...STRIPLING) and we had a hell of a time just hanging out and finding camaraderie in G.H.W. (good, hard work). Yay us.

A horse designed by committee

Big 'decision' day here at the Oscar Wilde Centre. Making choices on book design, which editors' changes to take into account, who to argue with, etc. A good day, but a trying day. We are a pretty amenable group, usually coming to some sort of an agreement on all the decisions, and this theme held true this afternoon. We basically have our cover design chosen, and we are entering the absolute, positive, 110% final round of editing changes (remember how I said we were done before? WRONG!) Hopefully by the end of next week, we'll be sending the final copies to the design/printer to put the finished product together.

Here's what we look like when we're making decisions at night, having civilized debate on whether the sub-sub-title of the book should be italicized, SMALL CAPS, or erased altogether.

Our Official Home..

The real deal website (none of this running commentary nonsense) is up and (somewhat) operational. Check back to it for official details and prestigious presentation. Check back here for, well, running commentary nonsense.


http://www.tcd.ie/OWC/sixteenafterten



ready yourselves...

Shameless

So we've gotten together a (mostly) finished proof/reader copy of the book. Thanks to me, it was highly imperfect in regards to spacing, pagination, line length, and the like, but what's done is done right? Emily had a few copies bound and send out to potential folks who could offer some kind words for use on the cover of our book, or puffs as they're known in the industry (new knowledge to me, but what of this process isn't?).

There's something of this whole process that smacks of humiliation, but I don't imagine that's unique to this book, but more a simple and true part of putting out a stack of paper which basically just contains your opinions of the world and asking people to care what you've said and how you've said it. At a certain point, you've got to accept the inherent humility, as we are now, and ask people to graciously give their names and praise to our good cause of art.

So we're in a bit of stasis right now waiting for response from the 'names' who'll possibly be heaping praise upon us, but after the good word arrives, the steps towards completion (layout, design, printing) should really be off and running. Sit tight, everyone.

Making Books

Since we're making a book, we went to go see how books are made. A good time was had by all.

It never ends...

So hopefully the final versions of all the stories/poems for publication have been put to rest today. It went down to the wire, with lots of confusion and misunderstanding over the collective rules we were all following for grammar and punctuation. I personally could have been the final to submit a completed draft, so I might be the crown-holder for least organized.

It's amazing how just when I thought things were done...like really finished, new wrinkles turn up in our writing in the least expected of places. But as of this evening, we can say with near-certainty that the content portion of the book is complete. Next, of course, is the layout, the design, the printing, the publicity, the advertising, the hype, the hucksterdom of getting it sold, the hoopla of the launch, and so on. There'll be more about these details as the days roll by, which they are doing all too fast lately.

In the end, the book is about the stories and poem of the members of the Trinity writing program. Everything else is just a ribbon on the box, but the work is the gift. For all of the eventual readers out there, the gift has been purchased, and is hidden underneath your parents' bed until we can get together some really swell wrapping paper and ribbons.

Say it to yourself -- sixteen. after. ten. -- it isn't far off, everybody.

Finishing Touches

Mass group editorial meeting today. Laughs and stress, red pens and M&Ms. We spent a few hours today doing a near final runthrough (is runthrough one word, two, or a hyphenate?) of our stories for the anthology. All who were there can agree that some good old-fashioned work was put in by all, and we're nearing a finished product to send off to the design/printing company.

Special thanks go to Emily and Monica who have unarguably (is that a word?) put in the most all-around work in this stage. The supporting cast isn't chopped liver either though. Here's what editors look like when they're hard at work.

T-Minus Eleven Weeks

Hello, and welcome to the ongoing progress report of the upcoming literature anthology to be released by the 2007-2008 Creative Writing Program at Trinity College, Dublin.

Please keep this site bookmarked to stay updated with the new developments in the design, publicity, and release information for the book.