The Writers' Room

GARRETT CARR is a writer and map-maker originally from Donegal. His book, The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland’s Border (Faber & Faber) chronicles his journey along the entirety of the Irish border, weaving history, memoir, maps, and photographs into a timely story. With Brexit and tensions in borderlands around the world, Carr offers a deeply knowledgable perspective on the history - and possible futures - of the Irish borderlands. “Brexit has done more for the possibility of a united Ireland than the IRA campaign ever came close to achieving.” Read The Yellow Manifesto: A True Account of a Border and Its People. Carr is Senior Lecturer in the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens University Belfast. Read more about him and his work here. *This episode features “St. John’s Well” from Benjamin Dwyer's imagines obesae et aspect ingratae, a piece for solo viola performed by Garth Knox (New Dublin Press, 2015).

ANNEMARIE NÍ CHURREÁIN is a poet from North West Donegal living and working in Dublin. BLOODROOT is her debut collection. Presenter Jonathan C. Creasy and Ní Churreáin discuss her upbringing in Donegal, her relationship with Dublin, her writing practice, and working in collaboration with other artists. “There’s something really exciting about putting two people, or two art disciplines, or two voices together […] and seeing what comes out of that alchemy. I think of collaboration as a process of alchemy.”