Mike McCormack: ‘If I’ve one gift as a writer, it’s patience’

The award-winning Irish author on losing his father at 18, the drawbacks of English editors and the theme of imprisonment in his workMike McCormack was born in London in 1965 and raised on a farm in County Mayo in the west of Ireland. He published his first story collection, Getting It in the Head, in 1996, followed by three novels that have marked him out as an experimentalist. Notes from a Coma (2005) interspersed its narrative with a fragmentary commentary at the bottom of each page. His work reached a wider audience with 2016’s Solar Bones, in which a lonely Mayo engineer recalls his life in one unending sentence – it won the Goldsmiths prize and was longlisted for the Booker. His latest novel, This Plague of Souls, follows a painter named Nealon as he returns home from prison and sets out to find his wife and child amid brewing global unrest. McCormack lives in Galway with his wife, artist Maeve Curtis, and their son.What sparked the new book?I started writing it in 2012, around the same time as Solar Bones, which then asserted priority. It seems that I was very interested in how worlds collapse, but coming into Covid, the focus changed from how the world collapses to how do we put it back together. Both books are about men trying to build a world – one as an engineer, the other as an artist – and both books seem to think that world building has to do with the making of family. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2023-11-11 18:00:01 UTC ]
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Obituary: Mike Thaler

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London: Tom Crewe Wins the Sunday Times’ Young Writer Award

Jury comments about the Sunday Times Young Writer-winning debut, 'The New Life,' call Tom Crewe's book, a 'tenderly sensual account of masculine sexuality.' The post London: Tom Crewe Wins the Sunday Times’ Young Writer Award appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives

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Writers and Artists Across the Country

Two authors discuss their experience doing school visits through the nationwide literacy nonprofit. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

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At London Book Fair: Writers’ Prize Names Its Winners

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I didn’t get the credit for my bestselling book: the secret life of the celebrity ghost writer

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[ The Guardian | 2024-03-11 14:00:31 UTC ]
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Three Questions You Need to Answer as a Children’s Book Writer

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RuPaul has launched an online bookshop that will share its profits with writers.

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12 Brilliant Short Stories by Black Writers to Read Year-Round

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Palestinian-American writer Randa Jarrar was dragged out of a PEN event.

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Novelist's book is canceled after she acknowledges 'review bombs' of other writers

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A.S. Byatt, British writer and author of Booker Prize-winning 'Possession,' dies at 87

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