Seeing Eye Boy
2020, Four Windows Press
Seeing-Eye Boy, the first novel by poet and musician Terence Winch. winner of the American Book Award and Columbia Book Award, brings to life the Irish immigrant world of 20th-century urban America. The vivid and engrossing story of Matt Coffey, 12 years old going on 13, offers an inside look at a lost universe where two cultures, Irish and American, blended together in the new world. In the story it’s the fall of 1957, and Matt’s world is in turmoil. He’s acquired a new enemy named Bull Burke, has started taking care of a neighborhood blind man (who turns out to have been part of the resistance to the British during the Irish troubles in the old country) and his terrifying dog, and is feeling the stirrings of first love. On top of it all, now he has to contend with the threatened invasion of his block by the meanest gang in the Bronx, the dreaded Fordham Baldies. How he navigates his way through the minefield of early adolescence, and what he learns about love and life, are at the heart of Seeing-Eye Boy.
The vivid narrative shows immigrant adults interacting with their first-generation sons and daughters, while Irish and rock music co-exist uncomfortably as the Irish become Irish Americans. Matt and his buddies take on gang members who use bicycle chains as weapons, as everybody dances around the efforts of Irish cops to keep the Bronx safe from violence. The thrilling climax involves water balloons, mysterious voices in Matt’s head, firecrackers, fierce friendships, a dramatic rescue, a horrifying accident, and the eerie sound of the bagpipes.
Praise & Reviews
“I can still hear Matt Coffey’s voice telling me his strategies for making lunch or owning up to his fears. Wise and wise-cracking, this book is about pride, bravery, loyalty, and love. When word gets out, parents will be sneaking this book off their kids’ shelves.” —novelist Mary Kay Zuravleff
“Seeing-Eye Boy is not just the lyrically precise and definitive story of what it was like being a smart and sensitive Irish-American adolescent in the Bronx of the 1950s — it’s the lyrically precise and definitive story of what it’s like being a smart and sensitive adolescent anywhere, anytime.” —writer Michael Lally
“In his new novel, Seeing-Eye Boy, Terence Winch manages to step-dance Irish magic into prose and tell a story of courage, family, and the changing of Irish culture into Irish-American culture. Young adults, along with older adults, are going get excited about this story, guaranteed.”
— novelist & poet Thomas Davis
That Special Place
New World Irish Stories
2004, Hanging Loose Press
“A small but powerful collection of stories and lyrics…. The author’s compassion for all his characters shines…, as well as his ability to observe and unthread the smallest nuance of human word, emotion, or behavior. Perhaps it’s his musician’s ability to tie the strings of life together without missing a beat. There’s no shortage of humor or laughter here, either….”
— The Bloomsbury Review
“…The narratives exploring Winch’s many years of touring with Celtic Thunder focus on the wild, the profane, and the often simply crazy world of the itinerant performer and are often hilarious…. That Special Place is simultaneously steeped in familial and cultural memory, in a world that is both ancient and old-fashioned, and immersed in the vernacular of contemporary American literature. On the one hand, the narrator of these stories is the modest and reverent son carrying on a tradition while, on the other, he is the cool, anarchic, pill-popping hipster who plays music while holding tradition at arm’s length. That Special Place represents an important contribution to our understanding of Irish America, and is a vital contribution to Irish American writing.”
—Eamonn Wall, The Irish Literary Supplement
“Many readers know the name Terence Winch as a member of the great Irish American band Celtic Thunder. What you may not know is that he is a multiple award-winning author of 11 books and chapbooks and has poetry included in over 20 anthologies. Here he offers a wonderfully personal, humorous, and poignant set of nearly 30 short stories about the Irish-American experience. In his image-rich storytelling, he vividly portrays two distinct worlds, painting a precise and irreverent portrait of his parents’ experience as Irish immigrants in New York during the 30s, 40s, and 50s, as well as his own sordid and colorful tales of being a musician coming of age in the highly charged (and often whimsical) era of the 60s. As with any good writer, you can see the sights, taste the air, hear the sounds, and smell the atmosphere (no matter how smoky and boozy) in all his stories. A delightful read!”
—Dirty Linen magazine, June/July 2006
” ‘One voice, one voice’ is the shout when distracting sounds interrupt a party piece. And Terence Winch, master of poetry, prose, song and the button accordion, has a voice unique and memorable to which we do well to attend. It’s a voice clean, clear, funny and austere, one that delivers both respect and irreverence with utterly convincing authority. Terry is as generous as his father was in giving things away. What he gives us in this book is a world — two worlds in fact — his parents’ New York immigrant Irish life in the ’30’s, ’40’s, and ’50’s, and the bubbling, eventful confusion of growing up as an artist on the East Coast from the late ’60’s on. These worlds are joined at the heart by music. And we are as close (as they say in the old Irish poem) to ‘the music of what happens’ as we are likely to get.”
—Charles Fanning
“In That Special Place, Terence Winch reminds us again that he is the voice of Irish America.” — George O’Brien, from the Introduction to the book
Contenders
1989, Story Line Press
Chosen by Washingtonian magazine as the BEST WASHINGTON BOOK YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF
“In his underappreciated 1989 story collection Contenders, Terence Winch—better known as a poet and musician (he is a member of the local Irish band Celtic Thunder)—encapsulates twenty- and thirtysomething DC life in the 1970s and ’80s. The authentic details—Dupont Circle group houses, live music at the Childe Harold, riding Metro when it was new—bolster these wry, unsentimental tales about the push-me-pull-you of relationships.”
—The Washingtonian, December 2003.
“Street-wise short stories with an Irish lilt…[where] pubs, bars, and saloons are often places of wonder and illusion.”
—The Washington Post
“Terence Winch’s artlessly moving stories are DC classics.”
—Art & Artists
“Terence Winch’s Contenders has the same swift currency and raffish intimacy, and all the bright invention of his poems.”
—Roland Flint
“Terence Winch gives us back to ourselves through the spare and clean transparency of an unsentimental language.”
—Andrei Codrescu
Total Strangers
Letterpress chapbook of six prose poems; published by Coffee House/Toothpaste Press, 1982 (out of print)
“Terence Winch is an Irish-American version of Julio Cortazar. Both men use prose to poetic ends, both leave their readers gasping for breath at the moment of denouement. These little episodes are beautifully constructed.”
—The American Book Collector