The Irish Times Books Podcast

Why do so many readers tell writer Neil Hegarty that he captured their own family dynamic in his debut novel Inch Levels?

Perhaps the burial of past traumas was so common an enterprise in Ireland among a certain generation, it meant many of the next generation grew up absorbing the bleak effects of this silence – the theme of Hegarty’s book.

In this month’s Irish Times Book Club podcast, recorded live at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin, he tells us about the genesis of Inch Levels, a story of family secrecies, difficult dependencies and mutually enforced repressions.

The novel has been praised for vividly evoking the wild beauty of the Lough Swilly shoreline – Hegarty, who is from Derry, talks about the importance of using location and landscape to map the mental processes of his characters.

He also explains why a forgotten wartime tragedy was the starting point for this book, set between the 1930s and 1980s, tells us about the surprise Brexit interpretation that followed its publication in 2016 and explores the impact that writing fiction has had on his brain.

This month's novel is Married Quarters by Shane Connaughton. Books Editor Martin Doyle interviewed him at the West Cork Literary Festival.

Welcome to the Irish Times Book Club podcast for June 2017.

If this is your first time listening, you might be wondering how this works.

Each month we run a series of articles on irishtimes.com on a chosen author.

And at the end of each month we hold a public interview with that author at The Irish Writer's Centre on Parnell Square here in Dublin. It's free to attend.

This month our chosen author is Jennifer Johnston.

Jennifer's first novel The Captains and the Kings was published in 1972 when she was 42.

Her latest work, Naming the Stars, a haunting tale of love, loss and memory, which was published by Tinder Press last year.

Literary Correspondent Eileen Battersby interviewed Jennifer at The Irish Writer's Centre.

Check irishtimes.com for information about upcoming Book Club events.

This week the Man Booker International Prize, awarded for fiction translated in English, was won by David Grossman and his translator Jessica Cohen for his novel A Horse Walks Into a Bar. They both spoke to Irish Times Literary Correspondent Eileen Battersby.

Laura Slattery interviews EM Reapy about her novel Red Dirt at The Irish Writer's Centre.

www.irishwriterscentre.ie

www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-book-club

Eileen Battersby interviews Conor O'Callaghan about his novel Nothing on Earth at The Irish Writer's Centre.

https://irishwriterscentre.ie

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-book-club

Irish Times literary correspondent Eileen Battersby joins Martin Doyle for a discussion about the shortlist of nominees for the International Dublin Literary Award, of which Anne Enright is the only Irish writer.

Michael Collins, the Man Booker and International Dublin Literary Award shortlisted author, who last year ran a marathon a day for a month to raise awareness of Canada’s Irish Famine victims, talks to Irish Times Books Editor Martin Doyle about his career spanning Ireland and Rust Belt America.

This conversation took place at the Ennis Book Club Festival in Co. Clare and is brought to you in association with the Irish Writers Centre.

Eileen Battersby talks to Martin Doyle about the works included on the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for fiction in English translation, and some of the notable omissions.

Visitors are reminded that they are about to enter the Wunderkammer, a floating chamber where normal spacetime conventions no longer apply…

Beautiful Pictures of the Lost Homeland has been described by Claire Kilroy as a book about how we process trauma and by Rosemary Jenkinson as less of an airport novel, more of a “rocket launch pad novel”.

In a podcast recorded at the Irish Writers Centre in February, The Irish Times talks to its author, Mia Gallagher, about how and why she wrote this strangely compelling and compellingly strange epic.

The writer and actor discusses using 1970s Dublin as a setting, the creation of her trans woman character Georgia Madden and why she wanted to write about the experiences of German speakers in the Sudetenland in the aftermath of the Second World War.

The Irish Times Book Club podcast is produced in association with the Irish Writers Centre. If you would like to attend a recording of the book club podcast, visit www.irishwriterscentre.ie/irishtimesbookclub.

You can also follow the conversation online at #ITBookClub.