Adam Trodd
Adam Trodd won the inaugural Benedict Kiely Short Story Competition in 2017 and the Book of Kells Creative Writing Competition in 2018, as well as being one of the selected poets for Ireland’s first Poetry Jukebox installation in Belfast. His fiction and poetry have appeared in publications such as The Irish Times, The Incubator Journal, Crannóg, Banshee, The Molotov Cocktail, Ellipsis and The Caterpillar as well as the Bath Flash Fiction and National Flash Fiction Day anthologies. He has been shortlisted for the Cúirt New Writing Prize, Over The Edge New Writer Of The Year and the Bath Flash Fiction Award. He was a participant in the XBorders:Accord project with the Irish Writers Centre in 2018 and is on the editorial board of a new Irish online flash fiction journal called Splonk, started by Irish writer Nuala O’Connor.
Q: If you could travel back in time, which of the great writers would you like to meet and why?
A: I would like to meet Mervyn Peake or John Steinbeck. The Gormenghast series was a revelation to me in terms of the sheer scope of its imagining and the incredibly vivid characters Peake created. And I think it’s hard to find a better storyteller than Steinbeck, who could turn desolation into beauty. I’d love to pick his brains.
Q: Do you have a lucky writing talisman? If so, what is it?
A: My mother gave me a pen when I was 18. It is my only writing talisman.
Q: What is the least interesting part of writing for you?
A: Editing, at the point where the WIP becomes so familiar to you that you can’t see the wood from the trees. I liken it to a worker on their knees painting STOP on the road only to stand back when they’re done and see SOTP.
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