Hi,
This week, I'm in conversation with one of my favorite authors, Jan Carson. We talk about her latest release, Quickly, While They Still Have Horses, how growing up during the Troubles in Ireland fueled her passion for reaching across divided communities through writing and the arts, and how the Irish writing community supports fledgling writers.
Enjoy,
Mandy xo
Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based in Belfast. She is the author of several short story collections and novels, including Malcolm Orange Disappears, The Raptures, The Last Resort, and The Fire Starters, winner of the EU Prize for Literature. She has won the Harper’s Bazaar short story competition and been shortlisted for many awards, including the BBC National Short Story Award, the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize, and the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year. Jan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and her writing has been translated into over a dozen languages, appeared in numerous journals, and been frequently broadcast on BBC Radio. Quickly, While They Still Have Horses is her first book to be published in North America.
Jan Carson
Quickly, While They Still Have Horses, Jan Carson
Jan Carson's in-person event at El Encanto, Santa Barbara
**To learn more about Jan’s short story writing workshop, please email Mandy at mandyjacksonbeverly@gmail.com
Jan Carson's earlier episode on The Bookshop Podcast
The Bookshop Podcast
Mandy Jackson-Beverly
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Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a
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bibliophile.
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Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast .
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Each week, I present interviews with authors, independent
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bookshop owners and booksellers from around the globe and
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To help the show reach more people, please share episodes
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subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this
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podcast.
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You're listening to episode 259 .
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Jan Carson is a writer and community arts facilitator based
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in Belfast.
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She is the author of several short story collections and
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novels, including Malcolm Orange Disappears, the Raptures, the
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Last Resort and the Firestarters .
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Winner of the EU Prize for Literature, eu Prize for
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Literature, she has won the Harper's Bazaar Short Story
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Competition and been shortlisted for many awards, including the
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BBC National Short Story Award, the Shen of Gwailin Short Story
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Prize and the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year.
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Jan is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and her
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writing has been translated into over a dozen languages,
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appeared in numerous journals and been frequently broadcast on
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BBC Radio.
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Quickly While we Still have Horses is her first book to be
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published in North America.
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Hi, jan, and welcome back to the show.
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Speaker 2: Thank you.
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It's lovely to chat to you, Mandy.
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Speaker 1: Well, happy 10-year anniversary for your.
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Your first novel, malcolm Orange, disappears.
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Speaker 2: What's up last?
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This week actually was my 10th year in publishing, which it
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just both feels like it started yesterday and it's been going on
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for decades at the same time.
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But yeah, nice to see the weekly case of things in print
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getting bigger rather than smaller, but not to mention.
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Speaker 1: your novels have been published in a lot of languages
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, which is fantastic.
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Speaker 2: I think I've got 14 languages and counting, so the
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one that I'm most excited about at the minute is a small
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publishing house in Iran who reissue women's literature.
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They are translating the postcard stories at the minute,
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so it's just.
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It's such a privilege to think of women in Iran being able to
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read other women's voices from around the world Congratulations
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.
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Speaker 1: That's fabulous.
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And for anyone who isn't familiar with your book,
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postcard Stories, you and I spoke in length about this book
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and how it came to be in our previous conversation a couple
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of years back, so I'll make sure to put the link to that episode
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in the show notes.
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Now, for anyone who may have missed that conversation, can
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you tell us about what you were doing before you became a
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full-time writer and your work as a community arts facilitator
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in Belfast?
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Speaker 2: So, yeah, I was born and brought up in Northern
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Ireland right in the middle of the Troubles, the kind of period
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of conflict from 69 through to 98.
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Of period of conflict from 69 through to 98.
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And when the peace treaty came in 1998, there was a lot of
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European funding came in to do cross-community work and to try
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and bring this kind of divided, fractured community together.
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And a lot of that was done through arts work and it was a
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real privilege to come in in 98 and to work in that kind of
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environment.
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So mostly I was bringing Protestant and Catholic groups
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together to write or to create theatre or we did a few radio
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dramas and just to create space to listen to each other's
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stories and to give validation to the fact that there's not
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just one version of what happened here and that, you know
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, people can be hurt and broken and traumatized in very
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different ways.
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But people can be hurt and broken and traumatized in very
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different ways but they can also heal and learn from each other
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in multiple different ways as well.
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So for me, the arts is a very natural space to do that.
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It's not threatening, it's nuanced, it promotes empathy and
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so, yeah, I've been doing that for such a long time and still
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get to do little bits of it every so often.
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I'm just back from Malta where I've been doing that for such a
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long time and still get to do little bits of it every so often
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.
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I'm just back from Malta where I've been training up activities
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coordinators in nursing homes to deliver writing workshops for
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older folk out there.
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So I love that stuff and it really fuels the writing to be
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around real people and hear real stories.
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Speaker 1: And it's great that you're able to teach others how
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to facilitate this kind of work.
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I believe reading and listening to fictional stories helps
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develop our empathy toward others, because we're looking at
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life through multiple characters' point of view.
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I think.
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Speaker 2: For me it's tied into my own story.
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So I grew up in a very conservative, religious
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household, if anyone knows anything about northern Irish
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politics or history, and Ian Paisley was quite a big figure
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here in the kind of unionist protestant side of the political
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spectrum, and he was also a Presbyterian minister.
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So I grew up under that world of Paisley where, you know, women
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were silenced and art was frowned upon and it was a very
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tight kind of dogmatic space to grow up in.
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And the thing that has changed me has been exposure to books
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primarily.
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So you know, sneaking into the library as a five-year-old and
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discovering Agatha Christie at eight really changed my life.
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But later on we've an amazing cinema here in Belfast called
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the KFT and they show world cinema and I've been going there
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since I was 18 and just slowly discovering that our particular
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way of doing things is not the only way in the world.
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So I'm a big believer in making sure kids particularly have
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access to art early on so they can just see the world and
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experience a bit beyond their own backyard on paper, or to
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flip some paint on a piece of paper or a canvas.
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Speaker 1: Any form of creative expression is better than
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keeping emotion inside.
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Speaker 2: I guess and there's two sides to it as well, mandy,
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like I see that you know that kind of being able to sort
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through the muddle of everything you've experienced and have
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some clarity.
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That's a beautiful process to to walk with through with
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someone, and a lot of that goes back to kind of what we would
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call um reminiscence work.
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You know, thinking about the past but also what you touched
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upon there, this idea of we're never too old to learn something
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new.
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And some of the greatest joys and the biggest laughs I've had
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working with older people have been exposing them to a new
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thing they've never done before.
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So we did drum circles, we made radio drama, I brought in a
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photographer once and she did photography workshops and we had
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a chap who was 101 who discovered he was really good at
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photography oh my gosh so it's something incredibly validating
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and realizing that your worth to society isn't just in the past,
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like today, here we're celebrating the d-day landings.
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It's 80 years since the d-day landings in the uk and there are
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a lot of older people on the news today talking about what
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they did back in the 40s.
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But I also want people to remember that old people are a
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valuable part of society now.
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They're still contributing, they can still learn and grow,
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and you hold those two things in tension.
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That we, you know we celebrate and we learn from the past, but
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we also want to keep growing as people and as citizens.
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Speaker 1: I think it's good to remember Michelangelo's quote
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when, at 87, he said Ancora in paro.
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I'm still learning.
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Speaker 2: We just lost Alice Munro and look at her opinion to
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write incredible stuff right into like towards her century.
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And you know, here in Ireland we've got Edna O'Brien doing
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exactly the same thing and I honestly think, of all the older
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people that I've met, the ones who are the freshest and most
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healthy are those who are still challenging themselves.
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Speaker 1: Exactly.
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And speaking of challenging yourself, you're one of the
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hardest working writers I know.
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I know I've said this before about you.
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You're continually marketing and promoting your work and
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supporting others.
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Marketing has become a large part of a writer's life, whether
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via social media or in-person events.
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How important is it for aspiring new writers to build up
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their platform before sending manuscripts to agents and
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publishers?
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Speaker 2: I wish it was irrelevant.
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If I'm going to be honest, I really wish for those days when
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writers were able to just focus on the writing aspect of what
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they do, but I think the reality is now.
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I mentor four wonderful young emerging novelists that I'm
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mentoring this year and I always say to them guys, you need to
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keep a bit of awareness on how you know, how you're seen in
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this world, in this community, and the contacts that you have.
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And I hate the word networking, but you know networking can be
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a really useful thing to do and there's a tendency to look at
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that in a kind of slightly corporate, negative way.
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You know, meeting people and thinking what can I get for them
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from them and how useful will they be to me.
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But I'm also a big believer in the fact that we have here in
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Ireland a very, very strong community.
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The literary community here is absolutely obsessed with what we
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call holding the door open for the next generation, and so it's
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not nepotism and it's not kind of cold hard networking.
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It's stepping into a community that's going to embrace you and
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support you and encourage you and be there for the
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disappointments as well as the the big successes.
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But the expectation then, is that you do the same for
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whoever's coming behind.
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And I launched on Friday night there Orla Mac, a brilliant,
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brilliant novel called Mouthing if you want a straight off the
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press new Irish novel, and so she's my mentee this year, and
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we launched her novel down outside Kilkenny on Friday night
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and it's just a privilege to be able to stand on this edge and
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say welcome to the Irish writing community.
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Orla, we've got your back, and I know they do.
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Speaker 1: You are very lucky in Ireland, because I don't think
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that is quite the norm.
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I think there's different little groups around.
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However, from the Irish authors I've spoken with, being
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supportive to one another is kind of in Irish writer DNA.
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For example, think about how many Irish writers you've
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introduced me to Debut novelists , poets, artists and also think
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about who recommended you to me Linda Murray from Books Paper
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Scissors, an independent bookshop in Belfast.
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So, yeah, I have found the Irish writing community and the
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booksellers to be extremely proud and supportive of each
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other.
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And speaking of which, can you just repeat the name of the
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young author who is your mentor that just had her debut novel
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published?
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Speaker 2: Orla Mackey, m-a-c-k-e-y, and the novel is
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called Mouthing and it's set in a little rural Irish village.
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It's polyphonic, so each chapter is in a different voice
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of a resident.
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It's very funny, quite caustic, and if you're a fan of Donal
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Ryan or Roddy Doyle or that kind of sense of Irish humor, you'll
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love it.
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She's brilliant.
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Speaker 1: And speaking about Irish humour, let's talk about
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your latest book, your first to be published and released in
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North America.
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Quickly, While they Still have Horses published with Scribner,
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an imprint of Simon Schuster, Can you share this publishing
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story with us?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's taken me a long time to find a North
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American publisher.
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This is book number eight for me and I guess some of it has
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just been.
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It's difficult to get a publisher full stop at the
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minute and some of it is a little bit the the kind of.
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There's a slight prejudice in the US against what we would
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call unionist narratives about, about the conflict in Northern
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Ireland.
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So I mean, essentially we are the bad guys in the story, we
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are the colonisers and so a lot of Hollywood in particular has
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picked up on the nationalist narratives and a lot of the
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migrants Irish migrant community in the US are from a Catholic
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background.
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Bizarrely, most of the Protestants emigrated to Canada.
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So I've actually just finished a big research project at Queen's
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in Belfast called Bad Bridget where we looked at women who
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migrated from Ireland to North America from the kind of famine
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period through to the end of the First World War and end up
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incarcerated.
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And it almost entirely breaks down to Catholics go to the US
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and Protestants to Canada and there's some muddle around the
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Midwest as well.
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But you've got these big enclaves in places like Boston
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and Chicago where there's a very strong Irish Catholic kind of
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network there.
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So it was difficult to find a publisher that would take a punt
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on a version of the story that that's not the kind of status
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quo and I'm very lucky that my publisher at Scribner had
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actually spent some time in Northern Ireland and was very
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aware of the nuance and the complexity of the story and was
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actively looking for someone who was exploring the other side of
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the narrative.
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So I'm glad to have found a home where I feel very
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comfortable and they've been incredibly supportive, so
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hopefully this will be the start of a long relationship with
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Scribner.
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Oh.
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Speaker 1: I'm sure it will be.
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Let's talk about the stories, and quickly, while they still
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have horses.
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They are tender, hilarious and at times dark.
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You have a marvelously wicked way of blending humour often
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dark humour, as in one-hander with empathy and tragedy, so
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that the reader can't help but feel empathy for every character
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.
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Is this style of writing innate , or is it one you've developed
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over time?
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Speaker 2: I think it's innate.
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It's been bizarre because I think this particular collection
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is a little bit darker maybe than anything I've written for a
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few years, and a few people have sidled up to me and said
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are you okay?
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So I just want to reassure you, I am fine, I think I am.
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I'm drawn to the kind of darker side of things for a number of
00:14:45
reasons I think you know.
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As I mentioned earlier, I grew up in a very strict Presbyterian
00:14:50
household, and so the Bible was my central kind of prime, like
00:14:54
storytelling text.
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I learned to tell stories, and the Bible is a macabre, dark,
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quite violent in place of this book, and my first experience of
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church was two-year sermon series on the book of revelation
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, and if that doesn't make you into a dark storyteller, there's
00:15:12
something wrong.
00:15:12
Um, I think there's that.
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And then there's also just the books I've always been drawn to
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are particularly the southern gothic writers, so, uh, carson
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mccullers, flannery, o'connor and later on, when I discovered
00:15:27
shirley jackson, it was like all of the lights went on at once,
00:15:32
and at the minute I'm really adoring the contemporary, um,
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argentine women writers, so people like mariana enriquez and
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samantha schweblin, and their work tends to be dark and funny
00:15:44
and engaged with the politics and the culture of the places
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that they've grown up in.
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So you know, if you read enough of that kind of work, it's
00:15:54
bound to start to trickle into what you write.
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Speaker 1: And I know that you are a huge Agatha Christie fan,
00:16:00
so maybe there's a little bit of her style kind of seeping into
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the stories.
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Speaker 2: I think I mean people often because I'm a magical
00:16:07
realist and they often say you know where's the link because
00:16:10
christy was such a realist.
00:16:12
But I think what christy does really well is she gets her
00:16:17
readers to doubt everything.
00:16:18
You know that bit at the denouement scene where she goes
00:16:21
around and pyro says here's why you could have murdered this man
00:16:24
.
00:16:24
Butirot says here's why you could have murdered this man but
00:16:26
you didn't.
00:16:26
Here's why you could have done it but you didn't.
00:16:29
That is just.
00:16:31
It's a master class in destabilizing what the reader
00:16:34
thinks they know and what they trust.
00:16:36
And it's exactly the same premise that you do in magical
00:16:40
realism.
00:16:40
You set a kind of bar of this is normal, this is the everyday
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laws of living.
00:16:47
Let's make it a bit strange and a bit weird, and that's all
00:16:51
about tone and voice.
00:16:52
So I read Christie really carefully for that.
00:16:56
I also think.
00:16:58
Just there is nobody knows how to plot like she does, and then
00:17:01
there were.
00:17:01
None is so complicated.
00:17:02
To plot like she does and then there were none it's so
00:17:03
complicated.
00:17:05
Speaker 1: One of Agatha Christie's stories that has
00:17:07
lingered in my mind since I first read the story and now, of
00:17:17
course, it's gone from my head is the one where the main
00:17:18
character discovers who it was, who she contracted German
00:17:20
measles from when she was pregnant.
00:17:21
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's called the Mirror Cracked from
00:17:25
Side to Side.
00:17:26
Speaker 1: Yes, that's it.
00:17:27
Oh, my goodness, what a brilliant story.
00:17:29
Speaker 2: That's a Miss Marple.
00:17:30
So I'm currently rereading all the Marples because I'm
00:17:35
interviewing this chap called Mark Aldridge next week, and
00:17:39
Mark is amazing.
00:17:40
He's my hero.
00:17:41
He writes about Christie.
00:17:43
He's a big Christie academic so he wrote an amazing book about
00:17:47
pyro um about four years ago and he's just about to release the
00:17:51
companion piece, which is everything you need to know
00:17:54
about marple.
00:17:55
And the inner nerd in me, mandy , is so excited about this.
00:18:00
I don't want to be shown up by mark, knowing like 10 million
00:18:06
times more than I don't do, but he and that's saying something.
00:18:11
Speaker 1: Okay, now the first page of your short story, victor
00:18:14
Soda, had me chuckling.
00:18:16
I loved the way you introduce him by guessing his age with
00:18:21
each short story in quickly, while they still have.
00:18:24
Every phrase and word depicts a gorgeous lilt of Northern
00:18:29
Ireland.
00:18:29
And, by the way, when you're speaking about Irish authors, do
00:18:33
you separate them as Northern Irish authors and Irish authors?
00:18:39
Speaker 2: I would just, when I'm talking about writers, I'll
00:18:41
just say Irish writers, but the the phrase of how you refer to
00:18:46
the north is quite contentious here.
00:18:48
So, um, I was brought up as a Protestant unionist calling it
00:18:53
Northern Ireland because it's the United Kingdom, great
00:18:56
Britain and Northern Ireland.
00:18:57
If you're a nationalist, you don't acknowledge British rule,
00:19:00
so you will call it the north of Ireland, that is, the northern
00:19:04
part of the island of Ireland.
00:19:06
I, because I'm a big card, have recently just started calling
00:19:10
it the north because it's less contentious so would it be
00:19:14
considered okay for me to say depicts the gorgeous lilt of
00:19:18
northern Ireland um, yeah, you could.
00:19:21
I mean, most of of what I'm writing is actually set in
00:19:24
County Antrim, so the lilt comes from a thing called Ulster
00:19:29
Scots and there's a big push here in the north to get Ulster
00:19:34
Scots recognised as an official language.
00:19:37
It's a mixture of kind of English, a little bit of Irish
00:19:41
actually and some mostly Scots Gaelic English, a little bit of
00:19:46
Irish actually and some mostly Scots Gaelic, because a lot of
00:19:48
the Protestant settlers who came to settle in County Antrim and
00:19:50
the north part of Northern Ireland came from Scotland, so
00:19:52
my ancestors came from there.
00:19:54
So, to be honest, when I've had a few drinks I sound more
00:19:58
Scottish than I do Irish, and my granny would have this whole
00:20:03
really rich lexicon of Ulster Scots words.
00:20:07
So you'd say yin instead of one .
00:20:09
You say for don't know, you say a dinny can, which is very
00:20:13
Scots Gaelic.
00:20:14
So I use a lot of those words and also the shapes of the
00:20:18
sentences, how you phrase yourself in that part of the
00:20:22
world.
00:20:22
I don't actually think it's a language, I think it's a very
00:20:26
rich dialect, but I want to preserve those words because
00:20:30
they are gorgeous.
00:20:32
Speaker 1: The way you do it in the short stories of Quickly,
00:20:35
while they Still have Horses is fantastic because it adds
00:20:39
another layer to the depth of the stories, which is great.
00:20:43
And I'm going to give you a couple of examples.
00:20:45
In the story Victor Soda, you write, quote I couldn't have
00:20:50
told you what was going on around his ankles, for he kept
00:20:53
his trousers nipped in with bicycle clips.
00:20:55
And likewise in the story Grand , so, quote he's off at speed,
00:21:01
slipping about as his daisy print socks struggle to find
00:21:04
purchase on the lino floor, end quote.
00:21:07
Now, of course, here in the US it's linoleum, but because I'm
00:21:12
Australian, I immediately got the connection lino floor,
00:21:16
because that's what we call it.
00:21:17
I love that.
00:21:19
Your dialogue is effortless, it's smooth and funny.
00:21:24
Do you find yourself jotting down random phrases people say
00:21:28
in notebooks or character references to be used later?
00:21:32
Speaker 2: No.
00:21:33
So I'm really glad that you picked up on those as being
00:21:35
effortless, because they're not effortless when you're writing
00:21:38
them.
00:21:38
There's a lot of what I do is speaking aloud and I always say
00:21:44
to my students it is the cheapest, best way to edit
00:21:47
something, to get it tightened up, is to just read it out loud
00:21:51
and listen to how a sentence wants to kind of run along.
00:21:55
There's a rhythm to how we speak, a lyricality, and you
00:21:59
don't hear it unless you're actually listening with your ear
00:22:02
.
00:22:02
Your eye listens in a different way when you're reading off the
00:22:05
page.
00:22:05
But I also I'm a weird writer in that I can't write.
00:22:09
I have this lovely writing space now in this lovely yellow
00:22:13
office and I can't write here.
00:22:16
I have to go to like a coffee shop where there are voices all
00:22:19
around me and sometimes it is a.
00:22:22
It's like a chinning fork.
00:22:23
It's stopping and listening to hear how do folks actually
00:22:27
phrase themselves.
00:22:29
You know, the example that I always give my students is it's
00:22:33
not about writing things phonetically, it's about the
00:22:35
shape of the sentence.
00:22:36
So if you were in Ballymena, which is where I grew up, and I
00:22:41
said to you Amanda, you'll, you'll have a cup of tea.
00:22:43
Now, that's a statement in English.
00:22:45
It's a question in Balamina.
00:22:47
There's a question mark at the end of it.
00:22:49
You wouldn't ever say, mandy, would you like a cup of tea?
00:22:52
You'd just say you'll have a cup of tea, but it goes up at
00:22:56
the end, so it becomes a statement rather than a question
00:22:59
.
00:22:59
Yeah, those are the kind of subtleties of listening to
00:23:02
dialogue and I, you know, I learned from the masters.
00:23:06
Like Roddy Doyle writes Irish accents and better than anybody
00:23:10
on this planet, and that's from years of him putting his ear to
00:23:14
listening to how people talk on buses and things.
00:23:16
We have them now to read and to go back and think how do people
00:23:22
actually speak?
00:23:23
Speaker 1: Well, you do this beautifully, Jan.
00:23:25
Let's talk about short story collections.
00:23:28
Have you noticed an upsurge in popularity of this format in
00:23:33
Ireland and the UK recently?
00:23:36
Speaker 2: So maybe not in the UK, but Ireland is a funny place
00:23:40
in that we venerate the short story here.
00:23:42
So elsewhere in the in the world, you know, you'll approach
00:23:46
a publisher with, like I've got a debut short story collection
00:23:49
and they'll be delighted.
00:23:50
Like that doesn't happen very many places outside of Ireland.
00:23:54
Like normally it's like have you got a novel?
00:23:57
You prove your worth on the novel here.
00:23:59
It's like if you can't write a short story, what is wrong with
00:24:02
you?
00:24:02
You're a failed Irish writer.
00:24:04
And I think it think it's because we stand on the
00:24:07
shoulders of people like John McGahern and William Trevor, who
00:24:10
were absolute masters of the forum, and even Joyce, like
00:24:13
Dubliners, is such a good collection.
00:24:16
And then I also think it's because we have these incredible
00:24:20
spaces for the short story.
00:24:21
Like there's at least a dozen really, really quality literary
00:24:26
journals here in in Ireland where you can get paid properly
00:24:30
for a short story and have your first publication, something to
00:24:35
tell the world that you've arrived, kind of thing.
00:24:37
That culture I don't think exists many other places.
00:24:41
So I think in Ireland we always had that.
00:24:45
I think there's been a slight resurgence in the short story
00:24:49
outside of Ireland, kind of around the pandemic and onwards,
00:24:54
simply because people are reading in a slightly different
00:24:57
way.
00:24:57
You know, our concentration level maybe isn't the same.
00:25:00
A lot of folks are reading off a device, a Kindle or, you know,
00:25:05
online, and the short story is an easier format for that.
00:25:09
So yeah, it's funny, it's.
00:25:11
You know, the number one question you get asked when you
00:25:14
bring out a short story collection is what is the
00:25:16
difference between the short story and the novel?
00:25:18
And I, I this is not my own, I stole it from Colin Barrett,
00:25:22
who's another brilliant Irish short story writer and novelist.
00:25:25
He said a few weeks ago down in Galway the novel has to
00:25:31
practice a degree of hospitality , so this idea that very few
00:25:36
people will read a novel in one go, so it has to be hospitable
00:25:40
enough to invite you back to continue the reading process,
00:25:44
whereas a short story it's one sitting and there's a bit that
00:25:48
flannery o'connor says in good country people, where holga says
00:25:52
if you want me here, I am like I am.
00:25:55
Oh, I love that, and I think there's an element of that in
00:25:59
the short story.
00:26:00
It can be like so I'll, you know, give me seven pages and if
00:26:03
you don't like me, you don't have to ever read me again.
00:26:06
Move on to the next thing, which allows us to be a bit more
00:26:10
experimental, maybe, and to try other things with the short
00:26:14
story.
00:26:15
Speaker 1: I like what you said about literary magazines in
00:26:19
Ireland and up north accepting short stories.
00:26:22
While there are a ton of literary magazines here in the
00:26:25
United States, I think it is difficult for new writers to
00:26:30
have their voices heard.
00:26:31
Speaker 2: I think in the States as well.
00:26:33
Like you, have such an emphasis on the MFA system as well, for
00:26:36
you know writers coming up through paid creative writing
00:26:39
programs and universities and that's starting to creep in a
00:26:43
bit more here.
00:26:44
But it is still utterly utterly possible to be like Orla who
00:26:49
published this week.
00:26:50
She's a primary school teacher, louise Kennedy, who's had
00:26:53
massive success in the US now.
00:26:55
She was a chef and just in her 50s decided to have a go at
00:26:59
writing.
00:27:01
Speaker 1: You know you can get a publishing degree and do well
00:27:04
without having a university creative writing degree here
00:27:08
yeah, I think you've really nailed it there and let's face
00:27:11
it not everyone has the time or the money to do an mfa program.
00:27:17
It's just not possible and mfa programs just aren't for
00:27:21
everyone and there's the money element.
00:27:24
Speaker 2: I think there's also the intimidation element as well
00:27:27
.
00:27:27
There are folks that I've worked with over the years
00:27:30
through mentorship and things that just they're not from the
00:27:34
background of people who go to university.
00:27:36
It would be a massive leap for them to jump into that
00:27:40
environment.
00:27:40
And then I also think you know there's the big question that
00:27:44
comes up a lot is the sameness of what's produced in MFA
00:27:48
programs.
00:27:49
You know you get a lot of novels that are quite similar in
00:27:53
style and voice and if someone's entirely self-taught
00:27:57
and is just stumbling into writing writing what they want
00:28:00
to write you tend to get a little bit more off the wall
00:28:04
stuff.
00:28:04
I've read some amazing, amazing pieces by people who are just
00:28:09
entirely self-taught like love books, always read, thought
00:28:14
they'd have a go at writing and they come up with something.
00:28:16
That's amazing.
00:28:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely agree with what you've said.
00:28:19
I can't tell you how many cookie cutter books I've had to
00:28:24
read, and quite often they are from people who've done an MFA
00:28:28
program.
00:28:28
And that's not saying everyone is like that, but why not let
00:28:33
everybody have a chance at writing and it's hard.
00:28:37
Speaker 2: Like you know, I don't think I've had a student
00:28:40
yet.
00:28:40
So I mentor through this thing called the National Mentorship
00:28:43
Program in in Ireland, so it's all funded by the Irish arts
00:28:47
council.
00:28:47
I get paid and the mentees they get four sessions with me
00:28:51
across the year for free, so we basically get a novel from first
00:28:56
draft to ready for them to send off to, to agents and things.
00:29:00
And every single person that I've mentored hasn't got a
00:29:04
degree in creative writing and they're juggling this on the
00:29:07
side and they're wee voices like um Ray Ray, who's my Irish
00:29:12
Nigerian student.
00:29:13
She just got her first short story published in the Sting and
00:29:16
Fly two weeks ago, which is so proud of her.
00:29:19
But her work is a fusion of she.
00:29:22
She's a first generation Nigerian in Ireland, so her
00:29:26
parents moved there and she was born in Ireland and the story,
00:29:30
her story in her novel is about juggling Irish identity with
00:29:34
Nigerian identity.
00:29:35
So it's in English, irish and Igbo.
00:29:38
It's so interesting and it was really raw when we started
00:29:44
because she's studying medicine, she's not a writing student,
00:29:48
but the rawness is what actually is fresh and it feels like I
00:29:53
haven't read this before and I don't want to rub that raw edge
00:29:57
off her too much.
00:29:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a piece of silver.
00:30:00
It's okay to let it tarnish a bit.
00:30:03
It doesn't have to be all the time polished, shiny silver.
00:30:06
That's what makes authors unique.
00:30:08
I mean, let's face it, publishing is a business.
00:30:11
Publishers and agents want to make money from the authors they
00:30:15
sign.
00:30:16
Now, having said that, the authors I've been drawn to and
00:30:20
are more likely to read are those that have been signed by
00:30:23
UK or Irish publishers, for the simple reason they're not cookie
00:30:28
cutter novels.
00:30:29
I can only speak for myself, but I enjoy and I reach for
00:30:34
books that are a little bit more experimental.
00:30:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's spaces for it.
00:30:39
And there are spaces to be a writer here alongside something
00:30:44
else, spaces to be, um, a writer here alongside something else,
00:30:49
which I think is quite helpful as well.
00:30:50
To like, I I'm not getting to do enough of the community art
00:30:52
stuff at the minute.
00:30:52
I would like to be both a writer and a community arts
00:30:56
facilitator, because both are very life-giving to me.
00:30:59
But when you start to get into the corporate kind of cycle of
00:31:04
the publishing world, they want you to go 120 percent at it and
00:31:10
they don't think it's as important to go and read your
00:31:13
work with.
00:31:14
So when I was in Kirch and Galway last month I did a
00:31:17
reading in the hospice because folks from the hospice can't get
00:31:21
to the book festival and to me, reading to six people who won't
00:31:25
be here next year is just as important as reading with
00:31:28
Patrick DeWitt to 150 people who've bought tickets.
00:31:31
But it isn't in the publishing world.
00:31:34
You'll get individuals who, off the record, will tell you that
00:31:38
stuff's really important and we care about it.
00:31:40
But it's not in the DNA of the big corporate thing that is a
00:31:45
publishing voice.
00:31:45
But that is why I got into writing to have those moments,
00:31:51
those experiences, the connections.
00:31:54
Speaker 1: Well, they feed us, they nourish us.
00:31:56
If we don't give back to our communities, we lose them.
00:32:00
And while we may not be able to fix the bigger problems in the
00:32:03
world, we have the capabilities of helping to support our local
00:32:08
communities.
00:32:09
And that's gold.
00:32:10
It gives us our humanity, it feeds our creativity, our
00:32:15
empathy and our compassion creativity, our empathy and our
00:32:21
compassion.
00:32:21
Speaker 2: Do you want to be a writer who writes with no
00:32:23
humanity?
00:32:24
I think there are people that are doing that.
00:32:25
They're very intent on cleverness on the page and
00:32:30
getting a big book deal and things, and that's all right if
00:32:33
that's what you want to do, but it's not what I ever got into
00:32:37
this to do.
00:32:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a motto, and it is I support creativity
00:32:43
not marred by conformity, and I'm going to stick by that.
00:32:48
Last year, you were awarded a residency in the area where my
00:32:53
mom and dad spent their honeymoon the Blue Mountains in
00:32:56
New South Wales, Australia.
00:32:58
Really yes.
00:32:59
In fact, I'm looking past my computer and I have an old black
00:33:02
and white photo of them in a boat on one of the lakes there.
00:33:06
Anyway, let's talk about caramello wallabies, which I
00:33:10
have not tried, and something that you wrote about in a blog
00:33:14
post of your time in the Blue Mountains called Imagination
00:33:19
Resurrection.
00:33:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:33:20
So I got to go to Verona, which is the Australian National
00:33:24
Writers Centre, and because I had been on a residency in Cove
00:33:29
Park, which is the Scottish writers or Scottish arts
00:33:33
residency up near Loch Long, and then they wanted to swap an
00:33:37
Australian writer with a writer who'd been on their residency,
00:33:41
so I was like that's quite a nice deal, I'll go for that, yes
00:33:44
, please, um, and it had meant it was meant to be during, um,
00:33:49
the first year of lockdown, and it got pushed backwards and
00:33:52
backwards so it ended up being last September, which was great
00:33:56
because I was in residency then with three other female writers
00:34:01
an amazing Maori writer from New Zealand, an American writer and
00:34:06
also a fantastic Chinese writer .
00:34:08
All experiences I wouldn't have had if I hadn't gone to Verona.
00:34:12
And I decided I would use my month to write a crime fiction
00:34:17
novel.
00:34:17
And I realised quite soon on that I'm not very good at
00:34:21
writing crime fiction, but it was really good to have the
00:34:24
space to feel at something and not to have to justify the
00:34:30
funding and say I spent this on a useful thing, I spent it on
00:34:34
trying something that didn't work.
00:34:36
But that is, I think, at the heart of what it means to be an
00:34:39
artist sometimes and then on the side, I just let myself be very
00:34:43
fanciful.
00:34:44
So I wrote a few short stories that just felt like there's no
00:34:48
agenda to these, no one wants them, they're not for a deadline
00:34:51
and I really enjoyed writing it .
00:34:55
So I came away really rested and kind of obsessed with
00:34:59
Australian banana bread.
00:35:00
It's good, isn't it?
00:35:02
The lines make it much better than anyone else in the world.
00:35:05
Yeah, my little house, my writer's studio, where I wrote,
00:35:10
was in front of an orchard where the cockatoos came to every day
00:35:14
.
00:35:14
So I came home wondering why I don't have a cockatoo sitting on
00:35:19
my windowsill in Belfast looking at me, because it was so
00:35:22
nice.
00:35:22
Speaker 1: Yes, Australia has some gorgeous birds.
00:35:25
Speaker 2: They're loud and noisy, but they get away with it
00:35:28
because they're so beautiful, Mandy what are the ones that
00:35:30
have the big, long, pointy nose, that are in Sydney and they
00:35:34
kind of go through the rubbish?
00:35:37
Speaker 1: I think it's known as a long beaked ibis.
00:35:40
Speaker 2: I don't like those at all but it's got like a long,
00:35:44
thin kind of nose.
00:35:45
I could do with less of those.
00:35:47
But the cockatoos were fine and we went to a wombat sanctuary.
00:35:52
Speaker 1: Oh, Jan, wombats are one of my favourite animals.
00:35:58
Speaker 2: They are so sweet and cute I got to cuddle them, so
00:35:59
these were like big kind of rescued wombats that this lady
00:36:03
had been nursing back to health, and they were very affectionate
00:36:06
, so that was quite a nice experience too.
00:36:10
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you got to experience the cute and
00:36:12
cuddly side of Australian animals and not the darker,
00:36:17
scary, poisonous side of our animals.
00:36:19
Jan, I know you said you've been rereading quite a few
00:36:23
Agatha Christie books.
00:36:24
What else are you currently reading?
00:36:26
Speaker 2: So I've just come out of a weird phase because I was
00:36:29
reading for the Ondaatje Prize, which is the Royal Society of
00:36:33
Literature's kind of prize that they give for books which are
00:36:36
specifically about place, so it could be um poetry, non-fiction
00:36:41
fiction, so I had almost 100 books to read for that at the
00:36:45
start of the year.
00:36:46
So I'm just coming into this phase of being able to read what
00:36:49
I want to read and at the minute it's a huge pile of
00:36:53
proofs for books that are about to come out.
00:36:55
So I I've read some quite good stuff there.
00:36:58
Orla's book I really enjoyed.
00:36:59
I've got Kevin Barry's new one sitting ready to read, so I'm
00:37:03
quite excited about that and I've also been deep diving into.
00:37:09
I guess at some stage I really want to write some essays about
00:37:14
English women writers from the 50s and 60s, people who were
00:37:19
quite prim and proper in their external kind of real life but
00:37:22
their fiction was slightly caustic and, you know, satirical
00:37:27
and dark in places as well.
00:37:30
So I've been reading a lot of Barbara Pym, who I love,
00:37:34
excellent woman, and I also have been reading Barbara Commons,
00:37:38
who's not as well known but amazing, amazing writer,
00:37:43
c-o-m-y-n-s um and she wrote um kind of satirical but also like
00:37:51
there's a shirley jackson element to it.
00:37:53
If you took shirley jackson's kind of um her non-fiction books
00:37:57
that she wrote about, you know, life Among the Savages and
00:38:00
things like that, and fused it with some of her dark stuff, so
00:38:04
there can be a supernatural element in Commons but also kind
00:38:08
of commentary on kind of post-war, post-russian in
00:38:12
England.
00:38:13
I'm loving those at the minute just really loving being able to
00:38:17
choose what I write right.
00:38:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I'm kind of coming up to that
00:38:22
feeling.
00:38:22
I haven't made it there yet.
00:38:23
I have so many books to read.
00:38:25
Somebody told me about a book the other day that came to mind
00:38:29
when I was hearing you talk about, uh, women writers.
00:38:31
It's called I think it's called square haunting.
00:38:34
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the the um, it's the one about the
00:38:37
bloomsbury set.
00:38:38
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it's good, I've read that it is good
00:38:41
that's another one, then, that I need to put on my to be read
00:38:44
list.
00:38:44
Now let's talk about something super exciting.
00:38:47
In september, you're going to be heading out here to the
00:38:50
states and you and I will be in conversation together at the
00:38:54
lunch with an Author literary series at Al Encanto in Santa
00:38:58
Barbara on Tuesday, september 3rd, from 12 to 2.
00:39:02
Then, on Thursday, the 5th, you will be at Barrett's Books in
00:39:07
Ojai, and then the following day , on Friday, the 6th of
00:39:11
September, you're going to be teaching a short story writing
00:39:15
workshop.
00:39:16
Can you tell us about that, please?
00:39:18
Speaker 2: It's very practical and it's got a lot of what I
00:39:21
would call hard learned wisdom in it.
00:39:23
So whenever I facilitate a workshop, there is no boundaries
00:39:27
in what I'm going to share, so I will tell you as much as I can
00:39:30
of what I've learned, the hard way as well as the easy way.
00:39:33
We will be working on writing something together as well, so
00:39:38
across the time that we're together, we'll get the bones of
00:39:40
a story idea down.
00:39:42
So super practical and very suitable for people who are
00:39:46
beginning with the short story, people who have never had a go
00:39:50
at short story writing at all.
00:39:51
Please, don't be scared.
00:39:53
I will take you through the steps very carefully and in a
00:39:57
way that's not too intimidating but also useful for folks who've
00:39:59
maybe been working at short stories for a while.
00:40:00
Will take you through the steps very carefully and in a way
00:40:01
that's not too intimidating but also useful for folks who've
00:40:05
maybe been working at short stories for a while and feel a
00:40:06
bit stuck.
00:40:06
It's just a different way of coming out and looking at it,
00:40:08
maybe with a new perspective, but also good fun too, and we
00:40:12
have some fabulous writers already signed up for this event
00:40:16
.
00:40:16
I'm excited, don't you be telling me there's like Booker
00:40:19
Prize winners or anything?
00:40:25
Speaker 1: Oh dear, not that I know of Jen, but we've got
00:40:29
people coming from all over, so it's going to be really fun.
00:40:32
And a tip from my own experience about anybody who
00:40:35
might be thinking about signing up is I've been working on a
00:40:39
book now for a couple of years and because of some health
00:40:41
issues I went through.
00:40:42
It's been on hold for a little too long and I felt overwhelmed
00:40:47
by it.
00:40:47
So what I decided to do is just to start thinking of chapters
00:40:52
as short stories or scenes, and it's starting to come together a
00:40:56
little easier for me.
00:40:57
So that's another good reason to come and do this class.
00:41:01
If you're stuck in a novel, take a break and come and do the
00:41:04
class.
00:41:05
Plus, we'll have a good giggle, yeah.
00:41:07
Speaker 2: I mean I just don't want to over talk about it in
00:41:09
case I ruin it.
00:41:10
But I started a new book.
00:41:12
Then the next book is written and edited and pretty much good
00:41:15
to go.
00:41:15
So it's given me a little bit of a buffer time to be able to
00:41:19
be playful with writing.
00:41:20
So I've started a new book, which is is very unsexy topic.
00:41:26
It's about kind of legacy of trauma and how trauma if it's
00:41:29
not dealt with in one generation leaks into the next.
00:41:31
We would call it the legacy of trauma here.
00:41:34
But my way of approaching that because I am tired at the minute
00:41:38
, I'm traveling a lot has been I'm not writing a novel, I'm
00:41:41
writing five very long short stories and it just makes it a
00:41:45
bit less intimidating.
00:41:48
But it also I think you know that I'm reasonably a good
00:41:52
10 words in now and it has felt like I'm allowing myself to
00:41:57
be more experimental with the voice, thinking that when I get
00:42:01
to the next one I could do something completely different.
00:42:03
Because yes, it's a novel but these are also little vignettes
00:42:09
within.
00:42:09
Sometimes the short story feels very, very difficult as a form
00:42:13
to me because it's so exacting, you know you can't really have a
00:42:17
lot of to me because it's so exacting.
00:42:21
You know you can't really have a lot of extra subplots or
00:42:23
sentences and ideas that don't add directly into kind of the
00:42:26
kind of the the center of what your, your short story is meant
00:42:28
to be about.
00:42:29
But the playful part of me just loves the idea that you could
00:42:34
go a bit mad with language, that that you could try writing in
00:42:39
first person plural or you could try writing in the future tense
00:42:42
.
00:42:42
No way could you sustain that for 100 words.
00:42:46
But you know what, maybe for 3 words you could and it
00:42:50
would be okay.
00:42:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of pressure in writing a novel,
00:42:54
Whereas I think with a short story it allows you a little
00:42:58
more space for whimsy.
00:42:59
I kind of feel like that with poetry too.
00:43:03
Speaker 2: Do you know as well, and no one says this, but I'm
00:43:06
going to say it.
00:43:06
So poets, whenever they put together an anthology or a
00:43:11
collection, often like up to maybe a third or a half of those
00:43:15
poems will have been previously published in journals and
00:43:18
things like that.
00:43:19
So they've already been edited, they've already had feedback,
00:43:22
they've already tried reading them at readings and things, and
00:43:26
I forgot that.
00:43:26
It's kind of the same with a short story collection.
00:43:29
So you know, here I think there's five or six of these
00:43:32
that had been published previously in journals or
00:43:36
shortlisted for big competitions and that took the absolute fear
00:43:40
out of putting something out in the world because it's like
00:43:43
well, a third of those have already been given the thumbs up
00:43:46
, so that makes it a little bit easier, whereas a novel it's
00:43:50
like here is my soul that I have thrown onto a page for two
00:43:54
years please be kind to it and maybe no one has seen it apart
00:43:58
from your editor or your you know, your agent until that
00:44:01
point that it's released to the Guardian.
00:44:03
That's really scary.
00:44:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's nothing more paralyzing than that fear
00:44:10
of failure, that fear of rejection.
00:44:13
Plus, I think writing short stories and poetry helps us to
00:44:18
get back into a rhythm of writing again, which brings me
00:44:21
back to your class.
00:44:22
I am excited about doing it.
00:44:25
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to getting to hang out with you
00:44:26
in real life when we have a fist below the neck, Mandy.
00:44:30
Speaker 1: Likewise, Jan.
00:44:31
It's going to be so much fun.
00:44:32
Do you like hiking?
00:44:41
Speaker 2: I'm probably not that like I don't mind a little walk
00:44:43
, but I'm not.
00:44:44
I'm not a big like let's get crampons on and climb Everest
00:44:46
like that, especially because I imagine it's a bit warmer there
00:44:50
than it is here yes, I think you're right about that.
00:44:53
Speaker 1: Having, uh, visited Ireland, I would definitely say
00:44:56
yes, and September can go either way, but it's probably going to
00:45:00
still be warm.
00:45:01
Jen, I wish you all the best with the US release of Quickly,
00:45:05
while they still have horses.
00:45:07
I know the success of the UK release was wonderful, so let's
00:45:12
mimic that over here.
00:45:13
And yeah, tomorrow is the release date.
00:45:16
It is the 9th of.
00:45:17
Speaker 2: July.
00:45:18
I'm really looking forward to hearing what American readers
00:45:22
make of it, because you know all that stuff you were saying
00:45:25
there about reviews.
00:45:26
You know putting your soul out and it's really terrifying.
00:45:30
I don't always believe reviewers, but I really believe
00:45:34
real readers.
00:45:35
When they get in contact to say this made me cry or this made
00:45:39
me, like, laugh out loud in a coffee shop or something, I do
00:45:43
believe those people and never, ever, apologize to a writer for
00:45:47
getting in touch to tell them that you've enjoyed their book,
00:45:50
because that's the stuff that keeps us going when we're having
00:45:53
wobbly days yes, their words feed our soul.
00:45:57
Speaker 1: I look forward to meeting you in September, jan,
00:46:00
and all the best, take care you too.
00:46:03
Thank you, you've been listening to my conversation with Jan
00:46:07
Carson about her new collection of stories titled Quickly While
00:46:11
they Still have Horses.
00:46:12
If you'd like to sign up for Jan's short story class in
00:46:17
September, I'll leave the link in the show notes.
00:46:19
To help the show reach more people, please share episodes
00:46:23
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00:46:27
subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this
00:46:30
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00:46:31
To find out more about the Bookshop Podcast, go to
00:46:34
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00:46:39
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00:46:41
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00:46:46
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00:46:50
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00:46:53
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00:46:57
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00:47:00
The Bookshop Podcast is written and produced by me, mandy
00:47:04
Jackson-Beverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly,
00:47:08
executive assistant to Mandy, adrienne Otterhahn, and graphic
00:47:12
design by Francis Farala.
00:47:14
Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.
