Laura Kiely sits down with writer, editor, and former UCD student Conor Bailey about his independent literary magazine Flux.
It’s not surprising that UCD harvests a lively literary culture. Many of Ireland’s distinctly recognised writers received their BAs here. Novice first drafts were likely conceived under the stale fluorescent lights of the James Joyce Library; procrastinating some deadline, I’m sure.
While many colleges in Ireland offer creative writing at the MA level, UCD is one of the few since 2017 that also offers the subject at the BA level. Following in the footsteps of alumni like Maeve Binchy, Roddy Doyle, Emma Donaghue and Niamh Campbell, it should only make sense that the campus breeds such literary enthusiasm. UCD’s LitSoc encourages students to submit to their biannual, award-winning publication Caveat Lector. Additionally, the School of English, Drama and Film offers the practical module Literary Editorship which allows students to work together and curate a magazine called The New Word Order. However, the independent literary publication Flux was launched last April by one student, and has risen to prominence across the Belfield campus.
Conor Bailey is a 2024 UCD graduate of History and Politics from Ardee, but “fully buttered in Dublin now”, he quips. Over the past four years, he has delved into the ins and outs of highfalutin, political jargon, significant dates and sobering figures. In his spare time, he wrote short stories. Chatting with OTwo, he shares his perspective as a student artist.
“I started Flux in my final year and most of the work was done during the writing stage of my dissertation project, so it was quite tricky trying to balance it all - academic work, a part-time job and putting the magazine together. Honestly, it probably wasn’t the best time for creative endeavours, but I wanted to do it while I was still in college so it could still be a composition of other student’s work.”
Flux is a magazine featuring prose, poetry, short stories, art and photography. “The main idea is just that everybody can be an artist if they want,” Bailey shares,
“Creating art is a way to turn your emotions into something tactile and permanent, and we all have emotions.”
Bailey tells about how his mother inspired his reading as a child. “She used to bring me to the library all the time growing up so I guess I became a very avid reader. Around age twelve I sort of thought, ‘yeah, I could write stuff too,’ and I’ve just really enjoyed writing little pieces of fiction ever since.”
It is clear Bailey harbours a lively flair for creative writing, having been published in both Caveat Lector and The New Word Order during his time at UCD. He says, “I wouldn’t have started Flux without them giving me that jumping-off point.”
When asked if he found it difficult working alone, he relays that, “It was actually very fun to do Flux alone. I didn’t have to defer to someone else’s taste or deadline and I didn’t have to abide by any pre-existing rules or structures.”
Bailey is currently curating Flux’s third issue set to launch in mid-December. The previous two issues feature work that showcases what Bailey calls, “unadorned but impactful prose”. When asked how he handles mandating constructive criticism to the writers, he says:
“I like to keep the pieces as untouched as possible but when I have given feedback it usually relates to simplifying. It’s cliché but less is more. Aspiring writers easily get caught up trying to achieve the most complex, flowering writing style with so much going on that the message and plot and characters get lost. I try to suggest taking out all this stuff that gets in between what’s important. If they disagree, that’s fine also. I suppose, all this subjectivity is part of the fun.”
Bailey stresses how the main aim of Flux is to provide prospective artists with a platform, “A lot of people featured in Flux wouldn’t have necessarily called themselves artists, it was just a hobby on the side. It was very validating for them to see an audience respond to and engage with their work. Anyone can create if they want to, there shouldn’t be any elitism or labels going on, art is for the masses.”
Publications like The Stinging Fly, Banshee and Crannóg all began somewhere small. Though it can be very intimidating at the start, Bailey’s advice to students is to “submit, submit, submit, get your work out to anyone or anything that will have it.” He confides that he had been writing short stories for ten years before he felt that he could share them with other people.
“I was in a bit of an echo chamber and thought it was just my own little hobby that nobody else would care about, so it was very encouraging to receive compliments from strangers on something I wrote.”
Magazine editing cultivates new reading communities and fosters new collectives through the interplay of a shared ethos. College campuses yield very versatile milieus, bringing together students from various backgrounds, but it takes the bravery of that first step in launching such a platform. To keep this creative atmosphere thriving, it’s going to take proactive students like Bailey.