London Writers' Salon

#203: Doireann Ní Ghríofa — Turning Archives into Narrative, Excavating History, Writing Poetry and Fiction, Why Writers Are Often Their Own Gatekeepers

Episode Summary

Irish writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa on turning archival fragments into living narrative, writing across the borders of genre, and giving voice to the forgotten lives of women committed to a Victorian asylum.

Episode Notes

You’ll learn

Why the greatest gatekeeper between a writer and the page is often the writer themselves.
How a single word buried in clinical notes can become a bridge to a silenced voice.
What poetry can teach prose writers about immediacy and the shock of a strong opening.
The case for pointing at the gaps in the record rather than papering over them.
When a fleeting curiosity is worth following, and what happens once you treat it as real.
How third person can give a writer just enough distance to keep going.
A sense of fidelity to the reader you imagine standing at your shoulder.
How the drowsy space between sleep and waking can become an engine for ideas.
The ethics of using real names, and the difference between the dead and the long dead.
How the act of leaving things out turns even “fact” into a story.

Resources & Links

Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

About Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is an Irish writer devoted to exploring how the past makes itself felt within the present. 'A Ghost in the Throat' finds an 18th century poet haunting a young mother, leading her through visions of blood, milk, lust, and murder. Written on the roof of a multi-storey car park in Ireland, it went on to be described as "powerful" (New York Times), "captivatingly original" (The Observer), and a "masterpiece" (Sunday Business Post). 'A Ghost in the Throat' won the James Tait Black Prize and was voted overall Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, while the US edition was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It was translated into 20 further languages worldwide.

Doireann is also the author of seven critically-acclaimed books of poetry, each a deepening exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Awards for her writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA), the Ostana Prize (Italy), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, among others.

Her new book, Said the Dead, distils hundreds of hours of archival research into a polyphonic portrayal of a single institution — a derelict Victorian asylum in Cork, and the women once committed within its walls.