Louise Kennedy may not have been a name you’d heard five years ago. Since 2021, she’s had both a debut novel and a collection of short stories published. Trespasses was named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post and shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.  Her story collection The End of the World is a Cul De Sac came out to great acclaim.

Louise spent 30 years working as a chef and didn’t come to writing until her 50s. She grew up Catholic on the outskirts of Belfast in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. A bomb detonated in front of her grandmother during a walk to the bank, resulting in several hundred stitches. The pub that her grandfather ran suffered two bombing attempts. After the second one, they moved to Ireland where she still lives today.

She joins Marrie Stone to talk about both books, her approaches to short stories versus novels, what coming to writing later in life gave to her fiction, why Irish is such a dynamic language, the importance of her writing shed, and much more.

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(Recorded on January 31, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)