Author and Playwright Lucy Caldwell on Identity, Art, and Belonging

The Bookshop Podcast

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In this episode, I chat with Lucy Caldwell about contemporary Irish literature's vibrant yet complex landscape, her latest novel, These Days, and profound philosophical insights. Growing up in Belfast during the Troubles in a "mixed marriage" family—Protestant father, Catholic mother—Caldwell developed a unique perspective that informs her award-winning writing.

Lucy describes writing during the pandemic and experiencing "a portal between worlds" as she researched the Blitz while living through COVID lockdowns.
Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She is the author of three previous novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and three collections of short stories. She won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2021 for “All the People Were Mean and Bad.” Other awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the George Devine Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018, and in 2019, she was the editor of Being Various: New Irish Short Stories. In 2022, she was the recipient of the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters for her body of work to date.

Lucy Caldwell

These Days, Lucy Caldwell

Jan Carson, Author

Glenn Paterson

Wendy Erskine, Author

Kerry Dougherty, Author

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Chapters

1. Introduction to Lucy Caldwell (00:00:00)

2. Growing Up in Northern Ireland (00:03:23)

3. The Journey to Becoming a Writer (00:10:17)

4. Editing "Being Various: Irish Stories" (00:18:14)

5. Contemporary Irish Literature's Golden Age (00:26:33)

6. "These Days": The Belfast Blitz Novel (00:34:57)

7. Life, Death and Love's Importance (00:44:27)

8. Teaching Through Faber Academy (00:49:40)

9. Publishing with SJP Lit and Closing (00:52:27)

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