In Conversation with Kevin Barry

Date: November 02, 2015

Doors: 19:30 Interview Starts 20:00

Venue: London Irish Centre

The London Irish Centre have teamed up with Counterparts: Explorations In Irish Culture to present: In Conversation With Kevin Barry.

The night will include an in depth interview with Barry, a short reading from his latest book, an opportunity for the audience to put questions to the writer, and an exclusive book singing afterwards.

“These stories present an interesting polarity between Barry’s idiosyncratic humour, and his sombre sense of poetic introspection. It’s his ability to balance this combination, which makes him such a compelling storyteller.” JP O' Malley- The Spectator

Since he exploded onto the Irish literary scene back in 2007, with his debut book of short stories, There are Little Kingdoms, Kevin Barry has proven himself to be a writer who can reinvent himself over and over.

City of Bohane, — a graphic novel set in a lawless dystopian Irish underworld, written in highly stylish colourful prose — won the IMPAC Dublin LiteraryAward in 2013, turning Barry into a literary sensation in the US, Britain, and further afield.

In Dark Lies the Island, published by Jonathan Cape in 2012,the ghosts of dead Irish writers can be heard gently whispering in the shadows of Barry’s sharp, sinewy sentences, once again proving that he really is a true master of the short story form.

Beatlebone, to published by Canongate in November,sees Barry turn his hand for the first time to historical fiction. Well, sort of. The plot involves John Lennon getting stranded on an island off the west coast of Ireland in 1978. Expect Barry’s usual daft humorous prose, which never strays too far from a noble tradition of Irish storytelling.

Barry has a long list of literary accolades to his name. His debut novel, City of Bohane,was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Irish Book Award, and it won the Author's Club First Novel Prize, The European Prize for Literature, and the IMPAC Prize. His debut collection of stories, There are Little Kingdoms, landed him the Rooney Prize in 2007.

And in 2012 he won The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize for 'Beer Trip to Llandudno'. Beatlebone, even before publication, has already made its way onto the short list for the Goldsmiths Prize 2015.

“Irish writers have an advantage of writing sentences, because of the way the language is kind of weird, and pulled out of all sorts of shapes by our stew of influences on it. The English language as we speak it in Ireland- and especially as we speak it in places like Limerick, Cork and Galway – is a very strange creature you know, it moves through so many registers, and I think there is a lot you can do with it.”

Kevin Barry, in an interview with JP O' Malley, Irish Examiner, 2011