Bernard MacLaverty – Imprint: Writer in Profile

Novelist Bernard MacLaverty recalls his beginnings as a Medical Lab Technician and compares writing to ‘a science of feelings’. This interview explores topics around his early poetry, moving to Scotland after the Ulster Worker’s Strike and  being inspired by Brian Moore and the short stories of Michael MacLaverty. He explores the political underpinning of his writing and the film adaptations of his novels, drawing on the ‘tragic’ perspective of his work, the Northern Ireland ceasefire and themes of grace and redemption.

Imprint, a literature review programme, and its sister show Imprint: Writer in Profile screened on RTÉ1 for three seasons. Both were presented by Irish poet, writer and lecturer Theo Dorgan. Over the course of the Writer in Profile series Dorgan conducted extended, in-depth interviews with a wide range of Irish and international writers including Colm Tóibín, Bernard MacLaverty, Jennifer Johnston, Joseph O’Connor, Michael Longley, Doris Lessing, John Montague, Eavan Boland, Gore Vidal, Richard Ford and Margaret Atwood. This episode is part of The Loopline Collection Volume 1. To watch more of the collection click here