Special Guests; Literary Fiction
Ian Martin and The Coalition Chronicles
A brief word of warning before you start, Ian Martin is a swearing consultant. Don't read this interview if you are offended by strong language!
Ian Martin, The Thick of It's renowned Swearing Consultant turned Faber author, was interviewed by Donal Conaty, author of the political satire of the IMF bailout The Eighty-five Billion Euro Man. Here they talk bad language and great books...
When BBC 4's The Thick of It brought political satire kicking and screaming into the 21st century it also introduced the splendid notion that someone could have a job as a Swearing Consultant.
That couldn't be hard, could it? As an Irishman I like to think I can swear with the best of them. I can't. Very few if any of us, however, if any of us, could do it as well as Ian Martin. His peculiar talent for comic swearing as demonstrated on his satirical website Martian.FM got his foot in the door at The Thick of It as a Swearing Consultant on series one. He soon established himself as a writer on later series of the award-winning comedy that savagely ripped apart a political landscape culture where only the spin had substance has come to characterise the show.
With The Coalition Chronicles (Faber & Faber, September 2011) Ian Martin has taken his sweary brilliance to parliament with a satirical account of the first year of Britain's Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition government.
We all see our politicians giving the same dull, evasive, answers to the same dull questions on a daily basis. But what would they say if we weren't listening. If the microphones were switched off and the cameras weren't present.
Meeting A Pulitzer Prize Winner: Paul Harding
“Paul Harding’s appearance at Dublin Writers Festival is in association with Iowa City, UNESCO City of Literature and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature - click here for the free writers’ workshop.” In my ignorance, the word ‘free’ was all I needed to know when I spotted the above. I’d just finished a post graduate course and was penny pinching. I had meant to do research on who exactly Paul Harding, the workshop facilitator, was, but intentions do not actions make.
The workshop was held in a venue called The Lab on Foley Street, Dublin 1. I was ushered into an empty room and quickly nabbed a seat at the back. Serious looking people in serious looking clothes trickled in after me. Proper grown-ups, I thought, suddenly conscious of the pink hoodie, skinny jeans and Ugg boots.
In desperation I turned and greeted the lady beside me who, as it turned out, haled from Limerick. She lived up to the place name and responded by saying, “I’ve read his little191-page big book and just had to come.” I told her it was my first writers’ workshop to which she quickly responded: “Oh no, this is not just a workshop. No, no, no, no! It’s an afternoon with Paul Harding … Pulitzer Prize winning author of Tinkers Paul Harding.”
Spreading the Word
A native of Trinidad, Dr. Brenda Flanagan has a voice that truly reaches around the world. With a remarkable life crammed with experience and wisdom learned through overcoming adversity, Flanagan has generously shared some of her personal inspiration with writing.ie while she visits Ireland to begin a busy program organised by the US Embassy.
Growing up in an impoverished family of fourteen, in a small village on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, Flanagan told me how she always remembers a strong desire to experience what the wider world had to offer. She explains how she always wanted to be a writer, and the desire she had to write stories for others to read meant that publication was always her goal. However, as with every successful writer, the path to publication is not always as simple as the aspiration. Leaving school at the age of fourteen to help support her family may have put an end to many people’s dreams, but Flanagan is a survivor who has never stopped striving for her goals.Determined and talented, at the tender age of ten,she already begun to introduce her dreams to reality. Her writing career began with poetry and by 13 she was singing calypso. Following her departure from school she spent a period working in a factory before she found herself in her first real writing position - as trainee reporter for The Nation, the newspaper of the then ruling People's National Movement.
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