Jamie Attenberg, Cate Kennedy, Rosie Schaap and me!

The Writing Life: Friendship, Travel & Creativity Across Continents

The Crescent is delighted to welcome two best-selling international authors to Belfast: Jami Attenberg (New Orleans-based author of seven books of fiction and most recently a memoir),  and Cate Kennedy (Australian-based author of two short story collections, a novel, three poetry collections and a memoir). Cate and Jami will be in conversation with Northern Ireland-based writers Roise Schaap and Paul McVeigh, to share their work and discuss travel, writing experience and friendship.

Jami Attenberg is the New York Times best-selling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All This Could Be Yours. She has contributed essays to the New York Times Magazinethe Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, and The Guardian, among other publications. She lives in New Orleans.

Cate Kennedy is the author of two short story collections, a novel, three poetry collections and a memoir.  Her awards include the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for Poetry for her collection The Taste of River Water (Scribe, 2011) and the NSW People’s Choice Award for her novel The World Beneath (Scribe 2009, published Australia, the U.S.A, the U.K, France and Hong Kong). Her short story collections are both on the Australian school syllabus as study texts.  She teaches widely both in Australia and the U.S., and has just completed her PhD in Creative Writing.

Rosie Schaap is the author of Drinking with Men: A Memoir and Becoming a Sommelier. From 2011 to 2017 she was a columnist for The New York Times Magazine. Her essays appear in numerous anthologies, most recently the new edition of Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York.  She teaches creative nonfiction at Fairleigh Dickinson University and the Irish Writers Centre and her next book, The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country, will be out next year. A native New Yorker, she has lived in the Glens of Antrim since 2019.

Paul McVeigh is a writer, author and performer. His novel, The Good Son, won The Polari First Novel Award and the McCrea Literary Award. He is the Editor of three anthologies, including, 32: An Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices, (Unbound), published in 2021. paulmcveighwriter.com

Date Monday 09 May 2022

Time 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM

Price£4

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Free Event: In Conversation Australian Writers Cate Kennedy and Paddy O’Reilly

Australian Writers Cate Kennedy and Paddy O’Reilly in Conversation with Paul McVeigh

About this Event

Cate Kennedy is a novelist, short story writer and poet whose work features in the school syllabus in Australia. When writing about her favourite Australian fiction, the late Eileen Battersby recommended Cate Kennedy’s second short story collection Like a House on Fire (2012) and said: ‘Australia’s response to the art of Alice Munro, Cate Kennedy is a singular artist who looks to the ordinary in a small rural community and is particularly astute on exploring the fallout left by the aftermath of the personal disasters that change everything. Her debut collection, Dark Roots (2006) heralded the arrival of a fully-formed master of the form ….’ The Irish Times 

Paddy O’Reilly is a multiple award-winning Australian writer whose novels and stories have won and been shortlisted for many major awards, and have been published, anthologised and broadcast in Australia, China, Europe, the UK and the USA. 

‘In her latest collection, Peripheral Vision, Paddy O’Reilly proves to be one of Australia’s most accomplished authors of the long-wave story. Peripheral Vision has expansive energy, and will fascinate readers with a taste for open endings and vivid voices.’ The Australian

In conversation with me! I hope you can come along. Book free here.


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

Cate Kennedy Interview

us

Cate Kennedy and me at the International Conference on the Short Story in Vienna.

I interviewed the wonderful Australian author Cate Kennedy in Australia. Here’s Just one of the amazing things she had to say about writing…   “My problem with having any kind of creative life was that I was a hoarder. I was a hoarder with my own assets. A miserly little person who had this wallet of ideas and I would count them every morning and dole out one for this thing or that. I was a miser. And that is nothing but grief, down that path. The amazing thing that happens when you spend it all, when you put everything you’ve got into that next story, everything you’re hanging on to, make it the best thing you can do, don’t worry that you’ve got nothing else to save, because tomorrow, when you wake up, like a well, it’s rising from beneath. Better ideas. Better currencies. Better things than you’ve been hoarding in that little purse of yours. Don’t be a miser. Be profligate. Spend it all. That was a gigantic turning point for me. That made me realise I really wanted to do this. and I wanted to do it even if it meant self-publishing and getting a blanket on the ground and giving it away.”   Read the full interview here