Literary Fiction
Tom Darling's Summer
Oxford-born writer Tom Darling has just released his second book, Summer, to much critical acclaim both in the U.K. and Ireland. Freelance journalist Marése O’Sullivan spoke to him about how he established his writing career, what it was like getting his first screenplay made by an award-winning director, and what inspires him creatively.
Growing up in Norfolk and Cornwall (he now lives in Dublin), Darling had never planned to write bestselling novels or have a literary agent. In fact, he rather gravitated towards literature naturally, and with it came his love of writing.
“I didn’t grow up in a particularly bookish family,” he says, “but I did have an older brother who was an avid reader, so there were usually good books about. I remember reading To Kill A Mockingbird, when I was around ten or eleven, and loving it. At school I was good at English and fairly average at everything else, so literature sort of became my passion. But I don’t think I ever thought of becoming a writer; no one I knew did anything like that. It wasn’t until I came to Dublin and studied on the [Masters in] Creative Writing course at Trinity that I began to wonder if it was something I might be able to do and, even then, there was still a long way to go.”
Careless by Nature
An interview with Christine Dwyer Hickey
‘I remember when I was very small saying to my mother, “I think I’ll be a writer,” and she said, Why?” horrified because my parents knew a lot of writers and their lives wouldn’t have been exactly secure. I said, “I think I’m good at making up stories,” and she said, “Oh, you’re good at that, all right.”
Dwyer Hickey had a ‘chaotic enough’ childhood, attending several different schools. ‘I was thrown out of one of them. One I was leaving anyway, but if I hadn’t been leaving I probably would have been thrown out.’ There were forty girls in the class in the second national school she attended, and they were ‘bullied into learning Irish − no art, no anything’. And then, at the age of ten, she attended a local boarding school. ‘My family life wasn’t great, so I was glad to get out. My parents did split up eventually, but they were practising splitting up for quite a bit of time first, you know. My mother didn’t want me to go, but my father thought it would be a good idea. And it was. It was ridiculous really, because we only lived about four miles away.’
‘You did drama every day, you did painting every day. So I went from being the second stupidest girl in my class to always being in the top three. I got a gold star, I couldn’t believe it. Anyway, I wrote all about this in Tatty…’
Noelle Harrison's Inspiration
Her words have transported us to the Northwest Pacific, the woodlands of the Midlands and even the eerie salt marshes of the Camargue in Southern France. For author Noelle Harrison, travelling is a constant source of inspiration. In her latest novel, Where The Ice Burns, the icy landscape of Arctic Norway forms an impressive backdrop.
Noelle Harrison was born in England to an Irish Mother and spent much of her early childhood living in the Home Counties. After attending the University of London, she took the plunge and moved to Dublin in 1991. Throughout the early nineties she wrote and produced three stage plays as well as a short film with her theatre company, Aurora. Noelle left Dublin for Meath with her partner in 1997, where her son was born. August 2004 would see all her dreams finally come through with the publication of her debut, critically acclaimed novel, Beatrice. She has just finished her fifth book after spending time in stunning Norway researching it.
Catching up with Claire Kilroy
Claire Kilroy is the author of three novels, all published by Faber. Her debut, All Summer, is literary thriller about a stolen painting. Her second, Tenderwire, a love story between a violinist and a masterpiece violin, was published to great acclaim in 2006, and was shortlisted for the 2007 Irish Novel of the Year as well as the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Her latest novel, All Names Have Been Changed, set in 1980s Dublin and centring around a great Irish writer and his Trinity writing class, was published in 2009. Educated at Trinity College, she lives in Dublin. She was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2004.
Writing.ie was lucky enough to catch up with Howth’s finest to chat about ghostly tales, her all time favourite reads, and Ireland’s ever rich writing culture.
Finding the Right Words with Julia Kelly
JULIA KELLY, daughter of the late John Kelly (former Attorney General and Fine Gael TD) published her debut novel with my lazy eye in 2007. Having been named Best Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, with my lazy eye went on to be short-listed for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award at the Listowel Writers’ Week and was nominated as one of the Irish Book Awards Books of the Decade in 2010. Living in Bray, County Wicklow, Kelly is currently completing her second novel, due to be published later this year. Today she traces her trajectory from unpublished to published writer and talks us through building characters and constructing plots and the best sentences, which come to her in the bath.
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