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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 16 AUGUST 2020 7 CULTURE 'Irish writers have never shied away from a political outlook' First of all, how are you doing in these strange times? Like many writers, I found it quite difficult to continue writing during the early days of the Pandemic. It felt almost impossible to concentrate on anything. I'm actually quite thankful I had a couple of com- missions on the go with press- ing deadlines which forced me to keep writing. In some ways it's been such a difficult and quite lonely time. I live by myself and am usu- ally incredibly social, out and about all the time. I've really missed travel and community. In other ways, 2019 was an ab- solute hectic year for me and I have quite enjoyed the oppor- tunity to rest and read and live a slower pace of life, although I'm more than ready to be so- cial again now. When writing The Fire Starters did you get a feeling that you were on to something special? When I'm writing a novel I al- ways go through several phases. Initially, when it's just a con- cept being carried around in my head I invariably think it's going to be the best thing I've ever written. Then, I sit down to try and write it and around 20,000 words in I'm usually ready to give up on it entirely. I muddle through to the end, by which point I absolutely loathe the book, then my editor comes swooping in and shows me where it needs a little work and teaches me how to fall in love with it again. The Fire Starters was exactly like this. As was the novel, I've just finished writing. I fear this is going to be my pat- tern for novels for the rest of my writing life. Personally I saw The Fire Start- ers as a novel that expressed frustration and insecurities/ anxieties, maybe even a bit of anger? Am I correct in assum- ing that writers put a chunk of themselves in their works? I don't ever set out to inten- tionally place myself or my ex- periences within a story but I'm a firm believer in the fact that a writer can only create from the building blocks of what they've experienced directly or learnt about. Most of my fabrications begin with a kernel of truth to which I add imagination. Yes, there's frustration in The Fire Starters but it's also the book which made me fall in love with the city I call home and realise that I'm proud to say this is where I'm from. What was the inspiration be- hind the more surreal aspects of the book? That is… why mermaids or merrow…? Though Northern Ire- land's literary canon is large- ly grounded in realist fiction, I'm quite comfortable with my work being recognised as mag- ic realist. I think it fits well with the tradition of magic realist literature which engages with political and social commen- tary. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gunter Grass and Salman Rushdie all played a significant role in my development as a writer. The story of Northern Ire- land's troubled past has been recounted so often in literatura and film, I feel using surreal and absurdist fantastical imag- es can act as a kind of wake-up call for the reader, encouraging them not to become desensi- tized to the problems in our community. I'm also keep to emphasise the potential for wonder, beau- ty and the miraculous in the Protestant community which my work mostly focuses upon. This community is often por- trayed as dull and overly seri- ous. By weaving fantastical el- ements into my exploration of Protestantism I hope my read- ers will be able to see this com- munity is capable of creativity, imagination and wonder. Anna Burns, like you, has written about the Troubles. Caoilinn Hughes has written about the fall of the Celtic Tiger in her book, The Wild Laughter. Is Irish fiction moving into a more political territory? I don't think there's a liter- ary tradition anywhere in the world more steeped in politics and engagement with political theme. Irish writers have never shied away from exploring and challenging political outlooks in their work. I'm thinking of books like Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy which challenged Ireland's archaic at- titudes towards woman's rights back in the 60s, Joan Lingard, whose Across the Barricades novels, engaged directly with the Troubles and sectarian- ism and were school curricu- lum reads for every Northern Irish teenager in the 80s, and Seamus Heaney whose poetry is shot through with politics. To be honest, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an Irish writer past or present whose work isn't inherently political. What are you reading right now? My project for the year, in celebration of her centenary, is reading all 66 Agatha Christie crime fiction novels in order, I've just hit number 44, "After the Funeral" so I'm on track to get them all read before the end of the year. (I am reading other books alongside Christie but it's fair to say she's been a preoccupation this year). What's next writing-wise? I've just published a mi- cro-fiction collection "Postcard Stories 2" with the Emma Press at the beginning of August and will be publishing two books with Doubleday in 2021. The Last Resort which was a com- mission for BBC Radio 4, air- ing weekly from January 2021, will be released as a collection of ten linked short stories set in a caravan park on the North Coast of Northern Ireland in March 2021. My next novel, No Promised Land (working title) will be published in July 2021 and is set in 1993 in a small rural vil- lage in County Antrim where there's been a tragedy in a local primary school. I'm about to begin a new novel in Septem- ber and am also working on a series of essays about the writ- er's role in community. Who would you most like to be paired with at a literary festival? This would be a slightly un- wieldy panel, (I always think they work best with two or three writers), but if I could be in conversation with George Saunders, Karen Russell and Ali Smith I'd be incredibly in- timidated but also in heaven. The Malta Mediterranean Literature Festival this year will be held on Friday, 28 and Saturday, 29 August, on a small scale and limited to less than 100 people at Fort St Elmo. One of the five authors invited will be Jan Carson, winner of the EU Prize for Literature. Robert Pisani speaks to the Northern Irish writer Author, Jan Carson