Author

Interviewing Martina Devlin

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The Black Box

Wednesday 15 January, 1.00pm

Doors 12.30 | Unreserved seating 

£12:00 including lunch

Tickets

“Charlotte Brontë, who dazzled the world with some of literature’s most vital and richly-drawn characters, spent her brief but extraordinary life in search of love. She eventually found it with Arthur Bell, a reserved yet passionate Irishman. After marrying, the pair honeymooned in Ireland – a glimmer of happiness in a life shadowed by tragedy.

That moment of joy was destined to be short-lived however, as Brontë died just nine months into their marriage. Her genius, and the aura of mystery surrounding her, meant she’d been mythologised even within her own lifetime – a process which only intensified after her death.

Observed through the eyes of Mary Nicholls – who encountered Charlotte on that fateful journey to Ireland, and who went on to wed her widower Arthur –Charlotte is a story of three lives irrevocably intertwined. Bound by passion and obsession, friendship and loss, loyalty and deception – this a story of Brontë’s short but pivotal time in Ireland as never before told.

Martina Devlin’s enthralling new novel Charlotte weaves back and forth through Charlotte’s life, reflecting on the myths built around her by those who knew her, those who thought they knew her, and those who longed to know her. Above all, this is a story of fiction: who creates it, who lives it, who owns it.

‘Charlotte is elegant and sophisticated but also completely gripping. Martina Devlin brilliantly creates the world around this iconic writer, with characters who have the power to surprise and compel. I loved it.’ Emily Hourican

‘In Charlotte, the raw gold of Charlotte Brontë’s marriage to Arthur Nicholls has been wrought in a wonderful artefact; this is a beautiful novel full of mystery, intrigue and story.’ Carlo Gébler

‘A powerful and compelling novel that expertly imagines the lives and times of those closest to Brontë, and captivates the reader with its cleverness and eloquence.’ Mary Costello

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Martina Devlin has written novels, plays and short stories. She has won the Royal Society of Literature’s V.S. Pritchett Prize, a Hennessy Literary Award, and been shortlisted three times for the Irish Book Awards.

She writes a weekly current affairs column for the Irish Independent for which she has won a number of prizes, including National Newspapers of Ireland commentator of the year. She holds a PhD in literary practice from Trinity College Dublin.”

Reading and Q&A for Uni of Worcester

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by University of Worcester Creative Writing Course

Join us to hear Paul McVeigh read from his novel ‘The Good Son’ and take part in a Q&A about his writing career and creative practice.

7.30 pm

16th February 2021

Free

Register to get sent an online link before the event.

This event is hosted by the Creative Writing course at the University of Worcester.

It is free to attend: designed to enable students, staff and members of the public to access authors reading their work and talking about their creative practice & writing careers.

Please register and you will then be sent the link before the event.

For more information please contact Ruth Stacey: r.stacey@worc.ac.uk

and follow us on Twitter to find out about future events: @uowriting


The Good Son: Won The Polari Prize & The McCrea Literary Award

“The Good Son is a work of genius from a splendid writer.”

Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler

“A triumph of storytelling. An absolute gem.” Donal Ryan

Praise for The Good Son:

“The Good Son gave us one of the most engaging protagonists of the year in Mickey Donnelly, who occupies a space between whimsy and horror in Troubles-era Belfast.” Bailey’s Prize-winner Lisa McInerney Top Reads of 2015 The Irish Independent

“When I think of exceptional working-class novels from the last few years, I inevitably think of Kit de Waal’s My Name Is Leon and Paul McVeigh’s The Good Son.” The Observer

“Paul McVeigh has written a first novel of beautiful generosity, poignant in the delicate manner in which he evokes the brutality of an era. A striking fresco, mixing historical upheavals and hardships of a family shattered.” Le Monde

“Blackly hilarious (with) one of the most endearing and charming characters I’ve come across in a long time.” ELLE Magazine Best of 2015

Interviewing Sarah Perry

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An Evening with Sarah Perry

Thursday 22nd November 19:00 – 21:00

at Crescent Arts Centre Cube, 2-4 University Road, Belfast , BT7 1NH

I’ll be interviewing the wonderful Sarah Perry in Belfast in November. I read with Sarah a few years back at a festival in Ballycastle, Northern Ireland. Here’s what Waterstones said…

“We are thrilled to welcome Sarah Perry, the author of 2016’s Waterstones Book of the YearThe Essex Serpent, to Belfast in conversation with Paul McVeigh to discuss her new novel Melmoth.

Sarah Perry is the UK’s most extraordinary writer of Gothic literature. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway. She has been the writer in residence at Gladstone’s Library and the UNESCO World City of Literature Writer in Residence in Prague. After Me Comes the Flood, her first novel, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Folio Prize, and won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award in 2014. Her latest novel, The Essex Serpent, was a number one bestseller in hardback, Waterstones Book of the Year 2016, the British Book Awards Book of the Year 2017, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and Dylan Thomas Award, and longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017.

Melmoth is a profound, ambitiously realised work of fiction which asks fundamental questions about guilt, forgiveness, moral reckoning and how we come to terms with our actions in a conflicted world. A compulsive, terrifying and thoroughly modern Gothic novel, and a response to the Irish Gothic classic Melmoth the Wanderer.

Further details: 020892040159″

 

 

Interviewing Kit de Waal in Belfast

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Kit De Waal: The Trick To Time

Date Thursday 13 September 2018
Time 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM
Price£8 | £6

with Paul McVeigh

I’m delighted to be working with Kit de Waal again. We read together at a festival in Morges and for the Royal Society of Literature in London. I’ve also interviewed her for The Irish Times. This time I’ll be interviewing her live in Belfast. Here’s the blurb…

The Crescent is delighted to welcome to Belfast, the author of the Costa shortlisted and Irish Novel of the Year award winning novel, My Name is Leon, Kit De Waal for a Belfast Book Festival Fringe event. She is joining us to discuss her latest novel, The Trick To Time; an unforgettable love story.

Birmingham, 1972. Mona is a young Irish girl in a big city, with the thrill of a new job and a room of her own in a busy boarding house. On her first night out in town, she meets William, a charming Irish boy with an easy smile and an open face. They embark upon a dizzying love affair, a whirlwind marriage, an unexpected pregnancy – before a sudden tragedy tears them apart.

Decades later, Mona pieces together the memories of the years that separate them. But can she ever learn to love again?

The Trick to Time is an unforgettable tale of grief, longing, and a love that lasts a lifetime.

‘Weaving tragedy and joy, big themes and the minutiae of life, this is a love story to take on the classics’ – Emerald Street

Kit de Waal, born to an Irish mother and Caribbean father, was brought up among the Irish community of Birmingham in the 60’s and 70’s. Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, long-listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017.

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Kit and me read together at a festival in  Morges

 

Social Media Class, London

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The Author and Social Media

by London Writers’ Eclective

Paul McVeigh has become well known on social media as a go to person for other writers, and for juggling an online presence with his own work. He has over 4,000 followers on Facebook, 12,500 on Twitter and a blog that gets over 40,000 hits a month internationally – his blog is fast approaching 2 million visitors.

In this class you’ll find out how to build a social media platform, how to use that platform to help you get published, get reviewed and endorsed, access to high profile authors, and get paid work. Paul’s online presence has led to him being invited to establish the hugely successful international London Short Story Festival, become Associate Director of Word Factory the leading short story salon in the UK and being judge of prestigious literary prizes such as the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and The Dylan Thomas Prize. It has also gotten him invites to teach and read in Australia, Bali, Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore, Switzerland and Poland and access to interview authors such as Kevin Barry, and George Saunders from The Irish Times.

Paul set up and ran social media platforms for London Short Story Festival and Word Factory.

Paul’s short stories have been published in The Stinging Fly, commissioned by anthologies in the USA & Faber UK and by BBC Radio 3, 4 & 5. He debut novel ‘The Good Son’ won two awards and was shortlisted for a further four selling stage and multiple foreign rights.

This class has sold out in Belfast London and Melbourne..

DATE & TIME: Thu, March 15, 2018. 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM GMT

Location: Irish Cultural Centre, 5 Black’s Road, London, W6 9DT  View Map

Masterclass followed by A Novel Affair at the ICC at 19:00 – four novelists (Martina Evans, Paul McVeigh, Aoibheann McCann and Alan McMonagle) read from and discuss their work. Chaired by Conor Montague.

ICC