#11 Liz Nugent's Dark Materials

06/19/20 • 47 min

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.

Here, Liz talks about coping with pain stemming from a childhood brain haemorrhage, and overcoming challenges large and small – such as typing all her work one-handed: “Shakespeare wrote all his plays one-handed with a feather,” she says.

She also reveals the identity of her favourite fictional antihero (clue: he’s sexy but mean). Produced and presented by Martina Devlin with music by Daragh Dukes. More about Liz’s books here:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/77895/liz-nugent.html

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.

She also reveals the identity of her favourite fictional antihero (clue: he’s sexy but mean). Produced and presented by Martina Devlin with music by Daragh Dukes. More about Liz’s books here:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/77895/liz-nugent.html

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#10 Colum McCann on Motorbikes and the Middle East

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.

Elsewhere in the interview, Colum says he can’t write poetry but is drawn to it, and talks about writers he has known including Frank McCourt and Benedict Kiely. He also reads from his novel.

Produced and presented by author and journalist Martina Devlin. Music by Daragh Dukes.

:: Apeirogon is published by Bloomsbury https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/apeirogon-9781526607874/

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#12 Richard Ford on Flouncing and Failure

Richard Ford is listing his failures. He wanted to be a lawyer in the US Marines. That didn’t work out. He wanted to be "a lawyer, period”. That didn’t work out. He became a writer – that certainly counts as a success for the Pulitzer Prize winner.

Even so, between novels and short story collections he sometimes thought he was through with fiction and imagined doing other jobs.

But he kept going, he tells Martina Devlin in the City of Books podcast for Dublin UNESCO City of Literature. And that’s been the case for half a century.

Although when he’s between books, he claims to “flounce” around finding reasons not to work.

Sorry For Your Trouble is his latest book, a short story collection published by Bloomsbury.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/sorry-for-your-trouble-9781526620026/

Produced+presented by Martina Devlin with music by Daragh Dukes