My short interview with George Saunders for Word Factory on ‘A Swim in a Pond in the Rain’.
My short interview with Booker Prize-winner George Saunders for Word Factory
interviews
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
Interviewing Bryan Washington
April 24, 2021, 12:30pm Cúirt International Festival of Literature
ONLINE (YOUTUBE) / PAY WHAT YOU CAN
“A thoughtful, witty and heartfelt debut novel, Bryan Washington’s Memorial explores the challenges of intimacy, hard-won vulnerability and building relationships while dealing with your own shit. Fans of Sally Rooney will enjoy Memorial, a story about relationships and what binds us together. When Mike finds out his estranged father is dying, he leaves to visit him in Japan just as his mother arrives to visit, leaving her in the incapable hands of his live-in boyfriend, Benson. He and Mitsuko become unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that is at once moving and hilarious.”
“Bryan Washington is a writer from Houston. His fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, the BBC, Vulture and The Paris Review. He is also a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 winner, the recipient of an Ernest J. Gaines Award, a PEN/Robert W. Bingham prize finalist, a National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize finalist, the recipient of an O. Henry Award and the winner of the 2020 International Dylan Thomas Prize.
Bryan is joined in conversation by Paul McVeigh.”
‘A new vision for the 21st-century novel. It made me happy.’ Ocean Vuong
RTE Radio Interview about ‘The 32’
Interviewed on RTE Radio about The 32 Anthology
Here’s me on RTÉ One with Sean Rocks announcing that The 32: Anthology of Irish Working Class Voices extends the deadline to MAY 15 – we’re looking 16 new writers from all over the island of Ireland.
Submission Details here.
“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
Garth Greenwell Interview in Irish Times
After debut success, Garth Greenwell returns to the ‘pit of despair’
To Garth Greenwell, the huge international success of his debut What Belongs to You, “was the biggest surprise of my life”, and he feels “immensely lucky” as “the success of a book has as much to do with chance as anything else”. Its success has allowed him to have a career as a writer and teacher in a way he wasn’t able to in his previous 20 years of writing. He feels relieved, though, that the writing process itself, “the struggle”, just him alone with his notebook and “the pit of doubt and despair”, hasn’t changed. “I wouldn’t know who I would be without it.”
You can read my interview with him about his new novel, Cleanness, in The Irish Times.
Interview in Irish Examiner
I talk to Marjorie Brennan in the Irish Examiner about ‘The 32: An Anthology of Working Class Voices‘.
Cork Word Book Festival w/ Kit de Waal & Anne Griffin
RAISING THE BAR FOR NEW FICTION
FRI 26 APR 2019 8:00pm | €8/6
Kit de Waal and Anne Griffin will be in conversation with me.
“The Trick to Time is Kit de Waal’s second novel, taking place during the IRA pub bombings in Birmingham in 1974. Born in Birmingham to an Irish mother and an African-Caribbean father, de Waal began her writing career at the age of 45, after leaving school at 15. Seeking to address the under-representation of working-class voices in the arts, de Waal has established a creative writing scholarship.
Anne Griffin has worked with various charities following completion of a postgraduate diploma in Youth and Community Work. A recipient of the John McGahern Award for Literature, Griffin’s debut novel is When All Is Said. The protagonist is 84-year-old Maurice, who sits at a bar and toasts five individuals who have most profoundly impacted on his life in five internal monologues.
7.30pm: Join us for a pre-event whiskey tasting event from Master of Malt and discover the wonderful world of Irish whiskey through the distilleries while remembering the characters beautifully brought to life in Anne Griffin’s poignant bestselling novel, When All Is Said. Whiskies from Midleton and Bushmills showcase the incredible spectrum of flavours found in Ireland’s favourite drink and reflected in the toasts raised by character Maurice Hannigan to his loved ones in When All Is Said.”
German TV for ‘Wee Muckers’
I’ve written the introduction to Toby Binder’s wonderful photo book ‘Wee Muckers’ which is launched in Munich tonight! The book is a series of photographs of working class youths in Belfast.
German TV, Das Erste 1, flew over to do an interview with me and I took them around Ardoyne, where I grew up and where The Good Son is set.
You can watch the TV segment here (in German). You can buy Guter Junge (German translation) or The Good Son in English here.
Cork World Book Fest
Delighted to be appearing at the Cork World Book Fest again this year. More news to follow… save the date!
Interviewing Anne Enright
Anne Enright in Conversation
I’m excited to interview Man Booker Prize Winner Anne Enright for the second time, this time on home turf. The first time was in Waterstones Piccadilly for Word Factory earlier this year. We also sat on some panels together whilst at a literature festival in Morges, Switzerland.
Next February 9th, I’ll be interviewing her at the Seamus Heaney Homeplace, here’s the blurb…
‘Booker Prize-winning novelist Anne Enright is one of the most celebrated writers working in Ireland today. Her work is part of a great tradition of Irish writing that explores themes of family life, relationships, love, repression and memory.
Enright won the 2007 Booker Prize for her novel The Gathering, a story about the pull of family and the lure of home. Her first novel was The Wig My Father Wore and subsequent works have included What Are You Like?, The Forgotten Waltz and her most recent The Green Road. Her awards also include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Encore Award and the Irish Novel of the Year.
From 2015 to 2018 she was the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction and we are delighted to welcome her to The Helicon where she will talk about her work and career with Paul McVeigh.’
Come along, it should be a wonderful night.
The Good Son 