Ceallaigh's Blog
I've already mentioned the first bit of news in various places, but for those of you who haven't seen it, the American Folklore Society (AFS) graciously featured my writing and my Folklore & Fiction work in its "Featured Folklorists" segment a few weeks ago. You can read the article here.
The AFS has also just released a list of folklore podcasts, and Folklore & Fiction is among them. Here's the full list.
Happy New Year, everyone! It's been a while since I posted a year-end report, but I think 2021 certainly calls for it! Here's what I accomplished.
Happy book birthday to Rhonda Parrish and all the contributors to G is for Ghosts! I'm very proud of my own contribution, titled "Metal Crow and Ghost Crow," a near-future fable about souls and what it means to have one.
Happy book day to F is for Fairy, which contains my short story "B is for Burned/Every Broken Creature." Here's a bit of that story to entice you across the veil:
Welcome to Folklore & Fiction, the Internet home of scholar and author Ceallaigh S. MacCath-Moran | C.S. MacCath. I'm a PhD student of Folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the author of two collections of short fiction and poetry. Folklore & Fiction replaces the old C.S. MacCath website but contains all of the original content thanks to the phenomenal web development skills of my beloved husband and business partner, Sean, who built and themed what you see here.
Some things to know:
First and foremost, the Folklore & Fiction newsletter will launch tomorrow with "An Introduction to Folklore Genres." The focus of this newsletter is folkloric scholarship for writers, and it will be published on the first Folklore Thursday (#FolkloreThursday) of the month except in June and December, when I'll send subscribers an update on my publishing activities. These updates will go out on the summer and winter solstices.
E IS FOR EVIL had a book birthday today! This instalment of the ALPHABET ANTHOLOGIES series contains my story "H is for Hindsight/He Who Steals the Sun Shall Bear its Gravity." Here's the first paragraph:
Went for a drive on this blue and gold autumn day with a bag of Sugar Mama's cookies in the car. Passed a flock of about a hundred crows and stopped beneath them on my way back. I got out of the truck and tossed cookie bits on the ground under the electrical line some of them were sitting on. They watched...and watched...and watched. I ran out of patience, turned around, walked to the truck, and looked over my shoulder to find about fifteen flapping their black wings and fighting over my offering.
I've settled into my PhD program and thought I'd post about it. I haven't had much time to do more than keep up with my class work and release my collection, but today I'm taking a minor breather to get a haircut and go see Dr. Strange before the big push to write term papers begins. So I thought I'd post a quick update about my life so far in St. John's.
The Folklore Department and Discipline
Aaron Pound of Dreaming About Other Worlds has offered the most comprehensive review to date of The Ruin of Beltany Ring: A Collection of Pagan Poems and Tales. Among other things, he writes:
"At a mere eighty-two pages, this collection ends much too soon. C.S. MacCath's short stories have a raw and almost visceral feel that hones directly into the travails and triumphs of everyday life, casting light onto the ways in which those living such lives might turn to Pagan spirituality to help guide them through their days. The poems, on the other hand, display a strange mixture of the seriousness of epic myth combined with a joyful willingness to play with those myths, and an angry undercurrent beneath it all, that sometimes rises to the fore in a bitter rage. As I noted before, this isn't really a collection of fantasy stories: The subtitle for the book is A Collection of Pagan Poems and Tales, and that is an entirely accurate description. One could almost think of this book as a Pagan prayer manual, offering a brief and engaging glimpse into the thinking of a member of the modern Pagan movement, and as that it is definitely a collection worth reading."