The Art of Reading Book Club | Episode 11: Blank Pages and Other Stories by Bernard MacLaverty

The Arts Council Podcast

The December Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Bernard MacLaverty about his short story collection 'Blank Pages and Other Stories'. “MacLaverty offers a masterclass in how to create character, how to build scenes by accretion of detail, how to work with implication and suggestion, how to write indirectly and manages to create more energy and more expression by working in muted colours and plain textures.” – Colm Tóibín Bernard MacLaverty was born in Belfast (14.9.42) and lived there until 1975 when he moved to Scotland with his wife, Madeline, and four children. He has been a Medical Laboratory Technician, a mature student, a teacher of English and occasionally a Writer-in-Residence (Universities of Aberdeen, Augsburg, Liverpool John Moore’s and Iowa State). After living for a time in Edinburgh and the Isle of Islay he now lives in Glasgow. He is a member of Aosdána. He has published five novels and six collections of short stories most of which are gathered into Collected Stories (2013). He has written versions of his fiction for other media – radio plays, television plays, screenplays, libretti. Blank Pages, published in August 2021, is his sixth collection of short stories. Learn more about the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme here: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction-2022-2024/