On this month’s episode, host Nicole Flattery is joined by writer Colin Walsh to read and discuss Clara Kumagai’s story, ‘Real Boys’, originally published in Issue 35, Volume 2: Winter 2016 – Fear & Fantasy.

Colin Walsh‘s first novel, Kala, was published in 2023. A number one international bestseller, Kala won the Irish Book Award for Newcomer of the Year, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and the John McGahern Book Prize, and is currently shortlisted for the Nota Bene Prize. Kala was named a book of the year by NPR, the Guardian, Dua Lipa’s Service95 Book Club, GQ Magazine, and The Independent, amongst others. Walsh’s short stories have won several awards, including the Hennessy Literary Award and the RTE Francis MacManus Short Story Prize. His work has been published in The Stinging Fly and broadcast on RTE Radio 1 and BBC Radio 4. He grew up in Galway and lives in Belgium.

Clara Kumagai is from Canada, Japan and Ireland. Her fiction and non-fiction for children and adults has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Banshee and The Kyoto Journal. Her debut YA novel, Catfish Rolling was nominated for the 2023 Carnegie Medal for Writing, a finalist for the 2023 Great Reads Award and won the 2023 KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Book of the Year Award.

Nicole Flattery is a writer and critic. Her story collection Show Them A Good Time, was published by The Stinging Fly and Bloomsbury in 2019. Her first novel, Nothing Special, was published by Bloomsbury in 2023.

The Stinging Fly Podcast invites writers to choose a story from the Stinging Fly archive to read and discuss. Previous episodes of the podcast can be found here. The podcast’s theme music is ‘Sale of Lakes’, by Divan. All of the Stinging Fly archive is available to subscribers.