RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. This edition of Writer Presents, ‘Dublin We Were’, was written and is read by David Hayden.

David Hayden was born in Ireland and lives in England. His writing has appeared in A Public Space, Zoetrope All-Story, The Dublin Review, AGNI, New York Tyrant and The Georgia Review. He is the author of three collections of short stories Darker With the Lights On (Carcanet/Transit), Unstories and Six Cities, and a novel titled All Our Love.

Producers Benedict Schlepper-Connolly & Ian Dunphy
Recording Engineer Justin Brand at NRSIX Studio, Norwich
Additional Field Recordings Ian Dunphy
Edit and Mix Ian Dunphy
Series Music Benedict Schlepper-Connolly

This programme was created with the support of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon, and the Display Europe Project of the European Cultural Foundation, funded by the European Union. MoLI’s digital programme is supported by ebow, the digital agency.​​

Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the final episode within this three-part edition of Writer Presents, author Jan Carson speaks with poet and editor Sarah Hesketh, discussing the specificities of writing about dementia. They explore the process of finding balance between creative freedom and the responsibility of respect authors and artists carry in their endeavour to show the truth of the illness.

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in East Belfast. Her books include Malcolm Orange Disappears, Postcard Stories, The Fire Starters (EU Prize for Literature, 2019), The Raptures and Quickly, While They Still Have Horses. Carson has been shortlisted for the Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize, the BBC National Short Story Prize and the An Post Irish Short Story of the Year Award, and in 2016 she won the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize. Her work has appeared in journals such as Banshee, The Tangerine, Winter Papers and Harper’s Bazaar and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Carson specialises in arts engagement with older and people living with dementia and was part of an AHRC-funded research project at Queen’s University Belfast exploring the representation of Dementia in literature. jancarson.co.uk

Writer Presents is produced with the support of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon. MoLI’s digital programme is supported by Ebow, the digital agency.

Written and presented by Jan Carson.
Produced by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Ian Dunphy
Recorded and mixed by Ian Dunphy
Series music composed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Series music performed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly & Nathan Sherman

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In this continuation of a three-part edition of Writer Presents, author Jan Carson speaks with theatre maker and playwright Caoileann Curry-Thompson, discussing their own familial experiences with dementia and the effect the illness has had on their creative works. Carson and Curry-Thompson explore the stigma that surrounds dementia as well as the nuances of literary possibility with the illness. 

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in East Belfast. Her books include Malcolm Orange Disappears, Postcard Stories, The Fire Starters (EU Prize for Literature, 2019), The Raptures and Quickly, While They Still Have Horses. Carson has been shortlisted for the Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize, the BBC National Short Story Prize and the An Post Irish Short Story of the Year Award, and in 2016 she won the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize. Her work has appeared in journals such as Banshee, The Tangerine, Winter Papers and Harper’s Bazaar and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Carson specialises in arts engagement with older and people living with dementia and was part of an AHRC-funded research project at Queen’s University Belfast exploring the representation of Dementia in literature. jancarson.co.uk

Writer Presents is produced with the support of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon. MoLI’s digital programme is supported by Ebow, the digital agency.

Written and presented by Jan Carson.
Produced by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Ian Dunphy
Recorded and mixed by Ian Dunphy
Series music composed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Series music performed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly & Nathan Sherman

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the first episode of a three-part edition of Writer Presents, author Jan Carson speaks with Dr Jane Lugea of Queen’s University Belfast, exploring the complexities of writing from the perspective of a person with dementia, and how the use of language is key in depicting an accurate portrait of the illness. Carson and Lugea unpack the ethics of writing about and from the position of dementia patients, discussing the importance of representing lived experience in text.

Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in East Belfast. Her books include Malcolm Orange Disappears, Postcard Stories, The Fire Starters (EU Prize for Literature, 2019), The Raptures and Quickly, While They Still Have Horses. Carson has been shortlisted for the Sean O’Faolain Short Story Prize, the BBC National Short Story Prize and the An Post Irish Short Story of the Year Award, and in 2016 she won the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize. Her work has appeared in journals such as Banshee, The Tangerine, Winter Papers and Harper’s Bazaar and on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Carson specialises in arts engagement with older and people living with dementia and was part of an AHRC-funded research project at Queen’s University Belfast exploring the representation of Dementia in literature. jancarson.co.uk

Writer Presents is produced with the support of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon. MoLI’s digital programme is supported by Ebow, the digital agency.

Written and presented by Jan Carson.
Produced by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Ian Dunphy
Recorded and mixed by Ian Dunphy
Series music composed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Series music performed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly & Nathan Sherman

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the fourth episode of Writer Presents, writer, journalist and photographer Sally Hayden speaks to Gulwali Passarlay, Suad Aldarra, Helon Habila, Jane Grogan and Seán Columb about the role of storytelling in shaping our understanding of migration.

Sally Hayden is an award-winning journalist and photographer currently focused on migration, conflict and humanitarian crises. She has worked with VICE, CNN International, the Financial Times Magazine, TIME, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, BBC, the Washington Post, the Irish Times, the Guardian, the New York Times, among many others. Sally has reported from many countries across the globe, including Nigeria, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Lebanon, Jordan, DR Congo, Panama, Cambodia, Liberia, Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Niger and Sierra Leone. Her writing has been translated into nine languages and she has appeared as a TV and radio guest. Sally has a law degree from University College Dublin and an MSc in International Politics from Trinity College, Dublin, where her thesis was on post-conflict societies and theories of civil war resolution. Her first book, My Fourth Time, We Drowned was published in 2022.Writer Presents is produced with the support of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon

Researched and presented by Sally Hayden
Produced by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Ian Dunphy
Edited and Mixed by Ian Dunphy
Music composed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Music performed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Nathan Sherman

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the third episode of Writer Presents, writer and zine creator Sarah Maria Griffin looks at the importance of zines to her throughout her life and guides the listener through creating a zine of their own.

Sarah Maria Griffin is from Dublin. She is the author of the novels Spare and Found Parts, and Other Words For Smoke. She also makes zines.

Writer Presents is produced with the support of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Researched and presented by Sarah Maria Griffin
Produced by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Ian Dunphy
Edited and Mixed by Ian Dunphy
Music composed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Music performed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Nathan Sherman

RadioMoLI’s Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the second episode of Writer Presents, the poet, playwright and novelist Dermot Bolger looks at the life and enduring legacy of Herbert Simms (1898-1948) – the architect responsible for much of Dublin’s early twentieth-century social housing, whose home on St. Mobhi Road Bolger would pass on his pandemic lockdown walks.

“I found it fascinating to imagine his life – he was a man who suffered greatly from the strain of his work,” says Bolger. Through conversation with with three geographers – Dr Ruth McManus, Dr Joe Brady and Mary Broe, the writer pieces together the remarkable and tragic story of Simms’ efforts to improve the lives of many Dubliners. Broe, having grown up in Pearse House also sheds a poignant light on the lived experience of Simms’ designs. The programme ends with a powerful reading of Bolgers’ poem about Herbert Simms, ‘The Corporation Housing Architect’.

Born in Dublin in 1959, the poet, playwright and novelist Dermot Bolger worked as a factory hand, library assistant and small press publisher before becoming a full time writer in 1984. Bolger is the author of fourteen novels, as well as numerous plays and collections of poetry. He lives in Dublin.

Writer Presents is produced with the support of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Researched and presented by Dermot Bolger
Produced by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Additional Production by Ian Dunphy
Edited and Mixed by Ian Dunphy
Music composed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Music performed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Nathan Sherman

"Get on with what? Get on with getting a job and a house and a husband and all the rest of it and I just didn't want to. I wasn't interested – or able for any of that at all.... But I couldn't see any alternatives, I just couldn’t see any way around it, so I thought I’ve got to get out of here, and so I came to Ireland. So many Irish people have gone to England to get work and I came to Ireland to get away from it." – Claire-Louise Bennett

RadioMoLI's Writer Presents series invites writers to produce a radio programme focussing on and exploring a chosen subject that is close to their heart. In the first episode of Writer Presents, Claire-Louise Bennett looks at three writers that have inspired her own work: Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen, English writer Ann Quin, and French writer Annie Ernaux. 

Through interviews with novelist Dorthe Nors, writer and critic Jennifer Hodgson, literary agent Laurence Laluyaux and novelist Deborah Levy, Bennett teases out some of the challenges faced by these three writers, while reflecting on her own experiences as a woman and a writer from a working-class background. This episode of Writer Presents features a rare recording of Ann Quin reading her own work, and an extract of Bennett's new novel, Checkout 19.

"Reading their books gave me the courage to spend time with all those conflicting feelings that being reacquainted with my long-lost, working-class self, stirred up, and has provided me with the intellectual space to properly think through the relationship between class and writing and womanhood," says Bennett about Ditlvesen, Quin and Ernaux.

Claire-Louise Bennett grew up in Wiltshire and studied literature and drama at the University of Roehampton, before moving to Ireland where she worked in and studied theatre for several years. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural White Review Short Story Prize and went on to complete her debut book, Pond, which was published by The Stinging Fly in Ireland, Fitzcarraldo Editions (in the UK) in 2015, and by Riverhead (in the United States) in 2016. Pond was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2016. Claire-Louise Bennett’s new novel, Checkout 19 will be published by Jonathan Cape in August 2021.

Writer Presents is produced with the support of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

Written and presented by Claire-Louise Bennett

Produced by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly

Additional Production by Laura Harvey-Graham, Katie Mishler and Ian Dunphy

Edited and Mixed by Ian Dunphy and Benedict Schlepper-Connolly

Music composed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly

Music performed by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Nathan Sherman