The Tuesday Group with Bernie McQuillan

We’ll have a chat about the book, and raise a glass both to Bernie, and to all the writers of the group working on their own, soon-to-be-published work.

In the remote Donegal village of Rathmore, siblings Kitty and Tommy are placed in the Jeffers’ children’s home after the tragic death of their parents. Kitty swears to protect her brother, but when she falls for Finn O’Donnell—the heir to the village pub, The Lobster Pot—her promise is tested. Rejected by Finn, and desperate to make him pay, Kitty draws Tommy into a reckless plan. By the end of that summer, both boys have vanished, and Kitty has fled the village in disgrace. Thirty-five years later, Kitty returns, still searching for her brother. But when human remains are discovered in the quarry, suspicion quickly falls on her. Isabel, Finn’s sister, has long blamed Kitty for her family’s loss. Only with the help of Isabel’s niece Alannah does Kitty begin to face the truth—that the past will never be unearthed unless she reveals her own story. Spanning four decades, three families, two disappearances and one haunting village curse, The Lobster Pot is a gripping novel of passion, rivalry, and the dangerous weight of unrequited love.

“The Lobster Pot is a riveting family saga of high drama and tension, of intrigue, lies and suspense... Rathmore is a small Irish seaside village with big world problems: fraud, blackmail, misplaced loyalties, clandestine meetings, hidden desires. The bright lights of Galway and Dublin lure the fortunate young men away while the stranglehold of familial duty and religious censure conspire to keep the young women in place." – Bernie McGill, Winner of the 2023 Edge Hill Short Story Prize for This Train is For (No Alibis Press); author of The Watch House and The Butterfly Cabinet

Bernie McQuillan is an Irish writer, based in Belfast with her husband and four children and works in health and social care. Her short stories have won awards and been listed for the Hastings, Bournemouth and Leicester writing competitions and published in journals including The New Guard (US), Spontaneity, The Incubator, The Honest Ulsterman, Women's Way (Ireland) and The Birmingham Arts Journal (US). She is an Irish PEN/John Hewitt 2024 Freedom to Write Awardee. The Lobster Pot was shortlisted by Watson Little x Indie Novella Prize, longlisted by the Caledonia Novel Award and highly commended by Irish Novel Fair.

The Tuesday Group is a long-running creative writing workshop for prose writers at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s, coordinated by Dara McWade. Their regular Write Night sees a break from the workshop format to feature guest writers offering insights into their own writing lives.

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