“A gathering of possibilities”: anthologisation and contemporary short fiction

ABSTRACT This essay engages with the practice of anthologisation in contemporary Irish short fiction. It takes as its starting point Sinéad Gleeson’s remark in The Art of the Glimpse (2020) that the anthology is a potentially generous art form since it constitutes “a gift” or “a gathering of possibilities” for the unsuspecting reader. The essay extends out from Gleeson’s suggestive analogy to examine some of the ways that the anthological form allows established and emerging writers to be placed in generative company. There are complications, of course, as every instance of anthologisation is also an exercise in gatekeeping, which presupposes acts of negotiation, selection, ratification, and compromise. Anthologies play a critical role in the process of canon formation and in the delineation of literary heritage; they help to shape expectations of genre and form; and they reorient the textual environment in which stories are received and interpreted. This essay investigates these and related issues by looking at a selection of contemporary anthologies of Irish short fiction, focusing especially on the Faber series of New Irish Short Stories which began with the late David Marcus in 2005, and which most recently includes Lucy Caldwell’s Being Various (2019).