#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 More Than One String To His 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 The Truth About Secrets and Lies
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 My Film Won an Oscar – Emma Donoghue
City of Books
Writer Emma Donoghue us how she wrote an Oscar-nominated script working with director Lenny Abrahamson on 'Room'.
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#14 The Diplomatic Arts
City of Books
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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#13 Lemn Sissay and the Story of Why
City of Books
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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#12 Richard Ford on Flouncing and Failure
City of Books
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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#11 Liz Nugent's Dark Materials
City of Books
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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#10 Colum McCann on Motorbikes, Motivation and Middle East
City of Books
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