You’ve recently donated your literary archive to the Linen Hall Library in Belfast. As a highly respected teacher of creative writing, how important is it that your archive is available for future writers? What will they learn?
I hope they’ll see what a messy business writing can be: all the scraps and fragments and marginalia and crossings-out are there in evidence. And I hope they’ll see how important editors are to steer you towards a better articulation of what you’re trying to express.
When you were growing up, how conscious were you of other Irish writers, especially Irish female writers?
Heaney and Friel were on the school curriculum and Edna O’Brien’s work was in our school library but we didn’t study any Irish female writers.
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