#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_outlineLemn 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.
“My name was changed, I was treated as property,” the poet and playwright Lemn tells City of Books presenter Martina Devlin.
Lemn was born in a mother and baby home in England to an Ethiopian mother, fostered out and returned to care at the age of 12 - as he tells in his powerful memoir My Name Is Why. But poetry gave him a sense of belonging in a world he couldn't fathom.
More info: www.lemnsissay.com