The formation of a writer: an interview with Elaine Feeney.

Abstract

Elaine Feeney is an Irish writer of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. She has published three poetry collections including The Radio was Gospel (2013) and Rise (2017). Her debut novel As You Were (2020) won Dalkey Book Festival’s Emerging Writer Prize, The Kate O’Brien Prize, Society of Authors’ McKitterick Prize, and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the Rathbones-Folio Prize. Feeney’s short fiction has also been published widely including in The Art of The Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories (2020), The Paris Review, The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Poetry Review and The Guardian. Her second novel How to Build a Boat was published in 2023 and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. A new poetry collection, All the Good Things You Deserve was published in April 2024. She lectures in Creative Writing at University of Galway. Feeney is interviewed by fellow Irish writer, Helen Cullen, who has published two novels to date: The Lost Letters of William Woolf (2018) and The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually (2020). Cullen is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel University London and a literary critic for the Irish Times.