#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_outlineWriter Eoin McNamee blurs fact and fiction to produce art, whether exploring the activities of secret intelligence agencies or speculating on why Princess Diana died in a high speed car accident.
His 17 novels are gritty and poetic – beautifully written noir – and have earned him a Booker nomination. But they sometimes attract criticism for being near the knuckle, although he sees that as their function, he tells podcast host Martina Devlin.
He also writes episodes for Valhalla, the Vikings spinoff for Netflix.
His most recent novel, The Vogue, is set in Northern Ireland where a corpse is dug up, and other secrets uncovered along with it. “Writing should be transgressive," he says.
The Vogue is published by Faber. More info here:
City of Books is funded by the Arts Council and supported by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and the Museum of Literature Ireland