Winner of The Polari Prize Chosen for World Book Night 2017 Chosen as City Reads Brighton 2016 Shortlisted for The Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2016 Finalist for The People's Book Prize 2016 Shortlisted for The Guardian's Not The Booker Prize 2015 ELLE Magazine Best Books of 2015 Irish Independent Books of the Year Wales Arts Review Best of 2015 The Reading Agency Staff Picks Best of 2015 Gransnet Christmas Pick 2015 Book of The Month: The Tablet, BBC Radio, Ulster Tatler Longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award Mickey Donnelly is smart, which isn’t a good thing in his part of town. Despite having a dog called Killer and being in love with the girl next door, everyone calls him ‘gay’. It doesn’t help that his best friend is his little sister, Wee Maggie, and that everyone knows he loves his Ma more than anything in the world. He doesn’t think much of his older brother Paddy and really doesn’t like his Da. He dreams of going to America, taking Wee Maggie and Ma with him, to get them away from Belfast and Da. Mickey realises it’s all down to him. He has to protect Ma from herself. And sometimes, you have to be a bad boy to be a good son. The Good Son has been called 'outstanding' by Toby Litt, 'a work of genius' by Pulitzer Prize-winning Robert Olen Butler and McVeigh 'a wildly important new talent' by Laura van den Berg who Salon calls 'the best young writer in America'.
Author
Born in Belfast, I studied theatre at University and co-founded a theatre company to write and direct plays. After producing a number of plays I moved to London to write comedy shows before turning to prose. My short fiction has appeared in literary journals and anthologies published in the UK and USA and been translated into Spanish, Polish and Turkish. My stories have also been on BBC Radio 3,4, & 5. In 2017 I was shortlisted for Irish Short Story of the Year. My debut novel 'The Good Son' was been chosen for World Book Night 2017. It was City Reads 2016 book for Brighton and was the winner of The Polari First Novel Prize. It was shortlisted for The Guardian's 'Not The Booker' Prize 2015, shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award and finalist for The People's Book Prize. It was voted Best of Year 2015 in Elle Magazine, the Irish Independent, Wales Arts Review, The Reading Agency, Top Beach Read in The Pool and a Gransnet Christmas Read. 'The Good Son' has been translated into French (where is was shortlisted for the Prix de Roman Cezam), German and Hungarian and Russia.
