How Booker Prize-Winning Author Anne Enright Writes

Bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author, Anne Enright, spoke to me about eagles and moles, the interior engineering of a novel, her love of Irish poetry, and her latest THE WREN, THE WREN.

Anne Enright won the Man Booker Prize and the Irish Fiction Award for her novel The Gathering. She has also been awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Irish Book Awards, and was the first Laureate for Irish Fiction (2015-2018).

Her latest novel The Wren, the Wren, was named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by TIME, The Millions, Literary Hub, and others, and is described as the story of “... three generations of … women who must contend with inheritances―of poetic wonder and of abandonment by a man who is lauded in public and carelessly selfish at home.”

The New York Times called it, "... a powerful, thoughtful book by one of the great living writers on the subject of family," and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan said of the book, “The Wren, the Wren is an electrifying romp through language itself―its dizzying possibilities and satisfactions―led by one the most gifted writers working in English today."

Anne Enright has also published two books of short stories, her essays on literary themes have appeared in the London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books, and she writes for the books pages of The Irish Times and The Guardian.

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In this file Anne Enright and I discussed: 

• The moment of burnout that changed her career
• How she used to be a night owl scribe
• Why you shouldn’t over-panic, or over-plan
• The fallacies of impostor syndrome and inspiration
• How to create a fictional poet out of thin air
• Taking a long look at James Joyce across the table
• And a lot more!

Show Notes:

• Anne Enright - Wikipedia
• The Wren, the Wren: A Novel by Anne Enright (Amazon)
• Anne Enright Amazon Author Page
• Book Review: ‘The Wren, the Wren,’ by Anne Enright - The New York Times
• Kelton Reid on Twitter

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