'A soundtrack switches on and off, relentlessly searching for words to describe my sensations. This inner monologue accompanies me throughout my daily life, storing up ideas for me to draw on when I'm working on a book.'
Brian McCabe recalls the early influences that inspired him to become a writer and remembers the unconventional teacher who encouraged his first outing as a poet.
18-05-2017
Cynthia Rogerson contemplates the literary spurs of exile and outsiderhood, wonders whether she would have written any novels if she’d simply stayed at home in the USA, and explains why being a writer is easier in Scotland than in California.
Brian McAvera considers what we’ve lost in favouring naturalistic, TV-esque theatre over the wider and deeper possibilities offered by non-naturalism.
Can a British or Irish playwright ever escape the influence of Samuel Beckett? Brian McAvera reveals why he put Beckett on stage as a vampire and ventriloquist’s dummy, and explains how it all stems from those troubled questions of British and Irish identity – questions that Beckett, like so many writers, tried to escape by becoming a European.