Anne Enright
Anne Enright
Anne Teresa Enright FRSLis an Irish author. She has published novels, short stories, essays, and one non-fiction book. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize. She has also won the 1991 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the 2001 Encore Award and the 2008 Irish Novel of the Year...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth11 October 1962
CountryIreland
book writing people
The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.
character ifs bits
If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense.
grandparent static surnames
In more static societies, like Ireland, you can tell where a person is from by their surname, or where their grandparents are from.
effects hard
It is very hard to trace the effect of words on a life.
writing long way
The writing day can be, in some ways, too short, but it's actually a long series of hours, for months at a time, and there is a stillness there.
writing space able
To be able to have the space to sit down and write has always been my central policy.
feelings needs clear
When I'm working, I'm not so much disciplined as obsessive. I have this feeling that I need to clear everything away and get this down.
thinking phones talking
I am interested in levels of brain discourse. How articulate are the voices in your head? You know, there's a different voice for the phone, and a different voice if you're talking in bed. When you're starting off with a narrator, it's interesting to think, where is their voice coming from, what part of their brain?
clever writing thinking
I do wish I could write like some of the American women, who can be clever and heartfelt and hopeful; people like Lorrie Moore and Jennifer Egan. But Ireland messed me up too much, I think, so I can't.
roots narrative monsters
I'm quite interested in the absolute roots of narrative, why we tell stories at all: where the monsters come from.
lovely old-fashioned raised
I was raised in a very old fashioned Ireland where women were reared to be lovely.
hate games play
Here we go again. Always a few drinks, but sometimes even sober, we play the unhappiness game; endlessly round and round. Ding dong. Tighter and tighter. On and on. Push me pull you. Come here and i'll tell you how much i hate you. Hang on a minute while i leave you. All the while we know we are missing the point, whatever the point used to be.
writing problem solutions
Writing is not my problem, it is my solution.
book kids years
For 10 or 11 years, I had my kids, I wrote four or five books, and I was working all the damn time.