I’m John. This is my web page. I write stories and essays. I was born in Dublin and moved to Belfast in 2009 where I live with my wife and family.
Published Fiction
“To Be Jolly, Fa-La-La”
“The elves have decorated the kitchen by the time I come down to rinse out my soup flask.
My phone vibrates. Matilda. Aeroplane emoji and two glasses clinking. Good for her.
‘Hey there.’ An elf appears through the door with a box of baubles.”
(Humour Me Magazine – page 82)
“Down Under”
Forthcoming!
Slugger O’Toole Articles
“On Social Mobility and Silver Bullets”
“Arguing that hard work can heal social inequalities and divisions continues a tradition of positioning poverty and deprivation as problems for the individual.”
Full Article
“We Have Information, But Are We Informed?”
“Depending where you look, you can find either euphoric optimism about the information age, or utter terror of what lies ahead. All anyone can seem to agree is that this is new, in form at least. Although, there are familiar features.”
Full Article
“A Changed Picture: NI Assembly Election 2022”
“Having married an American, I have some practice at trying to explain our part of the world to extended family members. They laugh when I put on a Belfast accent, not because it’s accurate, but because it hadn’t occurred to them that a place as small as Ireland would have different accents, or that Liam Neeson sounds any way distinct from Colin Farrell.”
<a href="https://sluggerotoole.com/2022/05/10/from-a-birds-or-a-worms-eye-view-election-22-changes-the-picture-completely"<Full Article
“Do We Need a Dry January, Or Just an Honest One?”
“How does someone sitting without a drink in front of them at a social gathering, or worse, leaving one unfinished, come to be cause for suspicion? Or panic even: “Has nobody gotten yer man a drink, and him sitting playing? Quick, have barkeep fetch more vermouth.”
<a href="https://sluggerotoole.com/2022/01/13/maybe-january-would-be-better-spent-having-an-honest-conversation-about-how-we-got-to-a-place-we-seem-to-want-to-escape"<Full Article
“Has Resilience Become a Dirty Word?”
“To emphasise resilience, its critics assert, is necessarily to over-simplify the nature of individual experience and overstate the power any individual has to change their reality. I think this gets conflated with saying ‘nobody should try and become more resilient: we should fix The System before becoming preoccupied with self-improvement’. This is a category error that misses the bigger point.”
<a href="https://sluggerotoole.com/2021/07/09/has-resilience-become-a-dirty-word"<Full Article
Blog Archive
Coming Soon!
John Moriarty 