#24 John Banville Fades To Black
City of Books
John Banville, who has killed off his own Benjamin Black pen name, is disturbed by explicit depictions of violence in popular culture.
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#23 Neil Jordan and the Runaway Slave
City of Books
Oscar-winning filmmaker Neil Jordan runs parallel careers as a director and novelist, and his latest book is his most cinematic.
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#22 Danielle McLaughlin Finding Herself
City of Books
“As someone prone to get lost in the darker currents of my own head I’ve found it healthier to get lost in a book,” says Danielle McLaughlin.
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#21 Louise O'Neill on Why She's a Warrior not a Princess
City of Books
“The number 63 has come up for me time and time again in very strange ways,” says writer Louise O’Neill. “I have put it in each of my books."
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#20 Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's Poetic Licence Earned
City of Books
Poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin talks about a time when books were banned in Ireland.
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#19 Anne Enright on an Altered Ireland
City of Books
“I don’t know if Ireland is the same any more,” says Booker Prize winner and former Laureate for Irish Fiction Anne Enright.
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#18 Many Strings to de Bernières's Mandolin
City of Books
Louis de Bernières is known worldwide as the author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin - but at nineteen, teaching in Colombia, he was known for something else. Dancing like a chicken.
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#17 Haunted By The Ghost
City of Books
In her first podcast interview since winning the An Post Irish Book of the Year award for 2020, Doireann Ní Ghríofa describes how she shares her life with a famous 18th century widow.
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#16 Eoin McNamee's Hidden Histories
City of Books
Eoin McNamee blurs fact and fiction to produce art, whether exploring secret intelligence agencies or speculating on why Princess Diana died in a high speed car accident.
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#15 How Emma Donoghue Won an Oscar
City of Books
Writer Emma Donoghue us how she wrote an Oscar-nominated script working with director Lenny Abrahamson on 'Room'.
info_outlineIn this episode, artist Robert Ballagh talks about why Samuel Beckett thought he kept him waiting for breakfast, how his postage stamp design infuriated Northern Irish political leader the Rev Ian Paisley, befriending Nobel scientist James Watson and getting on the wrong side of Britain’s Prince Philip. He also discusses his autobiography A Reluctant Memoir, published by Head of Zeus
Later in the episode, writer Mary Costello takes a tour of the iconic James Joyce Tower in Dublin where Joyce set the opening chapter of his masterpiece Ulysses. During her walkabout in the 200-year-old building, she explains why she is drawn back again and again to Joyce’s work and why her latest novel The River Capture is inspired by him.
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A monthly podcast supported by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature in association with the Museum of Literature Ireland (MOLI).
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Presented & Edited by Martina Devlin
Produced by Steve Byrne
Music by Daragh Dukes