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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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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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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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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Writer Emma Donoghue us how she wrote an Oscar-nominated script working with director Lenny Abrahamson on 'Room'.
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Ireland's man in Washington, Ambassador Daniel Mulhall, talks us through the rhyme and reason of poetry - and how literature can act as a cultural bridge. He practises what he preaches by tweeting daily poems.
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Lemn Sissay shoots from the hip and speaks from the heart in this interview about mother and baby homes, the Black Lives Matter campaign and his experience in the British care system.
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Richard Ford is listing his failures. He wanted to be a lawyer in the US Marines. Didn’t work out. He wanted to be “a lawyer, period”. Didn’t work out.
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Doyenne of domestic noir Liz Nugent’s work has an army of fans including Graham Norton, who describes her latest hit Our Little Cruelties as part rollercoaster, part maze.
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Writer Colum McCann talks about his hope that his book, Apeirogon, may contribute to peace. It fictionalises the true story of two fathers, an Israeli and a Palestinian, who each lose a child in the conflict.
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