Donal McLaughlin: November 20, 2014

The Poetry Center presents a reading by Donal McLaughlin, in a Prose at The Poetry Center event, introduced by Peter Orner. McLaughlin is a fiction writer with many notable accomplisments, such as being Scottish PEN’s first ècrivain sans frontières and a recipient of the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Award, representing the City of Glasgow in both Berne (Scottish Writing Fellow) and Nuremberg (Hermann Kesten Fellow) and more.

After a brief introduction by Orner, McLaughlin speaks on his beginnings in writing and how his childhood memories and experiences gave him his template for his works. He then reads his stories "Big Trouble" from Beheading the Virgin Mary (Dalkey Archive, 2014), "Enough To Make The Heart," and "The Troubles (For You)."

This is then followed by conversation on McLaughlin's prose, inspiration, publication history, and writing process. McLaughlin concludes by reading a section from the title story, "Beheading the Virgin Mary."

Publisher
American Poetry Archives
Location
The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University
Date
2014-11-20
Event Run Time
00:59:54
Contributors
Steve Dickison
Peter Orner
Rights

©© American Poetry Archives. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For all other uses please email poetry@sfsu.edu.

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Donal McLaughlin (00:25:18)

Mclaughlin begins by explaining the work Orner spoke of in his introduction, "The Beginning Of," and gives some behind-the-scenes notes on his original concept for the piece. He then goes on to speak about his road to becoming a writer, and how his childhood became the basis of his work.

He begins his reading with "Big Trouble," the first story from his book Beheading the Virgin Mary. He follows with his story "Enough To Make The Heart," which is based on the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland. Last, he reads his piece "The Troubles (For You)." 

Conversation (00:29:21)

The coversation begins with Orner asking some questions on McLaughlin's prose and how he comes up with it in his writing and where his inspiration came from, before opening the floor to the audience. Like in his writing, McLaughlin answers both honestly and humurously. He concludes by giving a reading of a section of his story "Beheading the Virgin Mary."

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