Soula Emmanuel

Short story: Gigi and Sotiria

Out of the silence, Gigi hears a voice. It is not her own, nor the one of which she dreams, inexpressible but transfixing. It is a strong, deep, clear bell-chime – the sound of an older woman, weary and nicotine-stained. It seems to surround her, pulls her from her sleep and wrenches her into the bedroom in which she grew up, one she has redecorated for her new self but which retains in its walls so much of the former.

Short story: Christmas Number One

‘Jennie Barrett has a lovely broach from Switzers,’ she said. ‘Silver and purple. She’s going steady with a fella from Booterstown and he bought it for her.’

‘Jennie Barrett is the height of glamour,’ I said.

‘That she is!’ Gran replied.

I didn’t know who Jennie Barrett was – a former work colleague, probably, back when Gran worked in a factory making clothes – but I enjoyed the old lady’s stories, the way she sat on her leather sofa like…

Short story: It’s A Cruel World for Empaths Like Us

This time around, Fern devotes particular attention to the hair under your nose. A sadist at the clinic—and really, it’s hard to imagine anyone else working there—would relish the opportunity to blast heat at the upper lip, site of the toughest hair and the most sensitive skin, a sensuous and erogenous spot, of taste and smell and touch. It feels hot and sharp, like someone is holding a lighter under your nose. It is intimate, the close examination, the awkwardness,…

Short story: Eclipse-o

On the twelfth of August 1999, a total eclipse will pass over Europe, from Cornwall to Bulgaria and on to India, plunging the continent into darkness for a few minutes as it goes. I spotted it in the newspaper months beforehand, and it crept up in the manner of a cosmic Christmas: a fleeting moment of darkness before the bright lights of the twenty-first century, a hearty goodbye to war and oppression ahead of an assuredly happy future. Eclipse-o, the…

BBC Short Works: Rainbow Day

My short story Rainbow Day, narrated by Holly Hannaway, will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 27 September at 15:45, and will be available to stream here afterwards.

Essay: Tism rizz, tism miz

I saw a tweet a few weeks ago; reflective, I thought, of a broad cultural attitude towards autistic people, and particularly towards online autism culture: Autism is a thing that exists. Anyone who has met profoundly disabled non-verbal kids doesn’t doubt it. But in popular-culture ‘autism’ is a laundry list of essentially normal, albeit quirky and obsessional, behaviours that do not, in of itself, indicate disorder/disability. There is a desire to distinguish between high- and low-functioning forms of autism, to…

ShoutOut podcast: Trans writing in literature and theatre

In this episode, ShoutOut’s Executive Director, Ruadhán Ó Críodáin, sits down with writers Soula Emmanuel and Ezra Maloney as they share their experiences writing literature and theatre from the trans perspective. The podcast is here.

Reading Corner: Q&A with Soula Emmanuel

Debut novelist Soula Emmanuel tells the story of Phoebe Forde, an Irish trans woman living in Scandinavia who unexpectedly reconnects with her first (and only) girlfriend, igniting memories she thought she’d left behind. Over-educated and underpaid, Phoebe Forde is finally settling into her new life in Copenhagen with her anxious dog Dolly. Almost three years into her gender transition, she has learned to move through the world carefully, savouring small moments of joy. A woman without a past can be…