AS CLOSE AS YOU'LL EVER BE
by Seamus Scanlon

I am a fiction writer and playwright from Galway, Ireland (home of Druid Theater, Lord Haw Haw and The Quiet Man).  I am now living in New York and working as a librarian at City College’s Center for Worker Education. I had trouble negotiating my way around Ealing so you can imagine what New York is like for me! I attended TVU on a day release program while I was working at the Scientific Periodicals Library (part of Cambridge University).

We still received journals addressed to the famous nuclear physicist Paul Dirac (long deceased) so I liked the tradition of history and scholarship that imbued the library.

The library qualification from TVU subsequently allowed me to secure library positions in Southampton University, Queens University of Belfast, the National University of Ireland, Galway and City College of New York.

I never had any inclination to write until I worked as a librarian in Belfast.  It was a shock to walk into a city that was on a war footing.  I saw violence and rioting and bomb blast aftermaths and sectarian hatred and crippled teenagers (from punishment shootings) and met ex-prisoners, orphans, widows and widowers and a therapist who told me she was treating the severe psychic fallout the violence was causing for both perpetrators and survivors. It was while I was trying to process all this that I started writing about it.

My brother wrote brilliant short stories as a child so I felt I could not ever match him.  Whatever writing potential or desire I might have had I abandoned and studied chemistry and mathematics in my hometown college – University College Galway.  I was drawn to the artistic types in college though – they were more vital and interesting than my science counterparts. I probably topped the list of science nerds.

The collection As Close As You’ll Ever Be includes paramilitary violence in Belfast (the corner stone of the book) but then incorporated criminals at work and at play in Galway, Boston and New York. There are a few stories that deal with other issues so there is something for everyone (not really!).

It got good reviews (starred review from the Library Journal) and good press from Irish American publications. Ireland itself not so keen except for hometown papers The Connacht Tribune, The Galway Independent and The Galway Advertiser.

The style of the book was described as a cross between Joyce and Tarantino which I like. The Spanish translation is due out in May 2014 from Artepoetica Press

As well as fiction I write plays with similar themes explored in the book. They mostly feature the protagonist Victor who is Irish and smart and acerbic and lethal. The first play Dancing at Lunacy was staged in New York in Mar 2012. Further plays   in the Victor series (The Long Wet Grass, Black is Black) are due for production in September 2014.

2012 was a good year artistically - I was awarded a Fellowship at the MacDowell Artists Colony and a Fellowship at the Center For Fiction in New York.  

I have a novel nearing completion and a few short film scripts in the queue.

As Close As You’ll Ever Be                            

Real book:  http://www.cairnpress.com/pages/scanlon

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writerseamus

Latest flash fiction: House of Pain