WriteStuff HeadStuff Podcasts

As well as being a gifted writer, Ian Maleney is a very thoughtful and articulate speaker, which comes across in this conversation. Ian talks about a lot of the topics that he has that he expressed in his collection of essays, Minor Monuments, as well as many of the challenges that face a young artist in Ireland today. 

In Hugo Hamilton’s fictional memoir, Dublin Palms, he explores themes of home and displacement and describes the difficulty of growing up in a multi-lingual home. Here he discusses those themes and describes the process of writing fictional memoir, which he says is like creating a ‘blurry self-portrait’. He also reads from Dublin Palms and talks about how he writes now, after so many years of experience and success. 

Anne Griffin’s debut novel, 'When All is Said' is rightly getting praise from authors, reviewers and the public for its depiction of Maurice Hannigan, a fictional character that you come to deeply know and relate to through reading the novel. Here, Anne speaks about how she got published, how she dealt with rejection and how she created such an affecting character. 

‘I think what poetry needs most of all is music.’


This episode of WriteStuff features Niall MacMonagle, who is incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about poetry. He is a teacher and collector of poetry, being responsible for some much loved anthologies, including the Lifelines series and Windharp. He has also created texts which present poetry to students like Poetry Now. Here he talks about the value of poetry to everyone and quotes some of his most loved poems as he explains the beauty of poetry in all its forms. 

Helen Cullen offers insights into how she wrote her first novel, The Lost Letters of William Woolf. After reading from the opening of the novel, Helen describes how she came to the premise of the novel and how she developed the characters. She also offers an honest portrayal of the anxiety felt at the different stages of the publication process.

In 'Illuminate', Kerrie O’Brien has created a collection of poems that deals with a range of themes, yet is coherent in its style and beauty. Here she talks about ‘Illuminate’ and the work that went into creating it as well as reading two of the most loved poems from that collection. She also gives her take on the current literary scene as someone who has worked in many areas of it and the relationship between her poetry and her visual art.