We read because we want to experience lives and emotions beyond our own, to learn, to see with others' eyes.

The 32 is a celebration of working-class voices from the island of Ireland. Edited by award-winning novelist Paul McVeigh, this intimate and illuminating collection features memoir and essays from established and emerging Irish voices including Kevin Barry, Dermot Bolger, Roddy Doyle, Lisa McInerney, Lyra McKee and many more.

Too often, working-class writers find that the hurdles they come up against are higher and harder to leap over than those faced by writers from more affluent backgrounds. As in Common People - an anthology of working-class writers edited by Kit de Waal and the inspiration behind this collection - The 32 sees writers who have made that leap reach back to give a helping hand to those coming up behind.

Without these working-class voices, without the vital reflection of real lives or role models for working-class readers and writers, literature will be poorer. We will all be poorer.

Sixteen established authors - including Kevin Barry, Roddy Doyle, Lisa McInerney and Lyra McKee - and sixteen new voices write on their experience of being working-class in Ireland

About the Author

Paul McVeigh's debut novel, The Good Son (Salt, 2015), won the Polari First Novel Prize and was named by Kerry Hudson in the Observer as one of the 'exceptional working-class novels from the last few years'. He has twice won the McCrea Literary Award and has toured the UK and Ireland with his plays and comedy. His short stories have appeared in the Irish Times, Faber's Being Various and Kit de Waal's Common People anthologies, on BBC Radio 3, 4 and 5, and Sky Arts. Paul was fiction editor at the Southword Journal, co-edited the Belfast Stories anthology and co-founded the London Short Story Festival. @paul_mc_veigh

Book Information
ISBN 9781800180246
Author Paul McVeigh
Format Paperback
Page Count 304
Imprint Unbound
Publisher Unbound