IOMV Guest Writer Reflections - Lisa McInerney

Lisa McInerney  was a guest writer for Island of Many Voices, a joint project between Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and The Linen Hall (Belfast), facilitated by Fiona O’Rourke. Here she reflects on her experience of meeting with the participants.

‘A world exclusive’, we called it. I was delighted to get the chance to read a little from my novel-in-progress for the group; you’d think this might be nerve-racking, but I think that it felt to me so comfortable says something about how a story is written to get out in the world. You write to reach people, to be read, and that’s the favour the group did me, on the morning of Saturday 7th March. The other reason I didn’t feel nervous is that the group was welcoming, relaxed and receptive — they made the prospect of sharing fresh words, and a potentially mad idea, very appealing. 

The conversation afterwards was invigorating, feeling more like a proper, vital exchange of ideas than anything didactic. We discussed working-class voices in literature: how to respect and support them in a world where postgraduate courses in writing feel, increasingly, like a prerequisite to success. From there to questions about editing one’s own work, how to write about marginalised lives or transgressive acts when such subjects aren’t subject to traditional research methods, and how to move between fiction and autofiction and back again. 

This is exactly the kind of conversation on craft I love to be part of — not the typical questions about where ideas come from or what my writing day looks like, but questions from fellow writers, provoked by their engaging deeply with their own practice. Good, chewy, challenging stuff, from a group of thoughtful and committed storytellers. We could easily have gone on for another hour.