Human consciousness is self-consciousness. We not only have experiences, we are conscious of ourselves having them, and of being affected by them. Belinda McKeon and Samantha Harvey discuss how self-consciousness is reflected in their own and others' fiction. 

Belinda McKeon's first novel, Solace, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was voted Irish Book of the Year. Her new novel, Tender, has just been published. She lives in Brooklyn and is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Rutgers University. 

Samantha Harvey's first novel, The Wilderness, which focused on one man's journey into dementia, won the Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Her new novel, Dear Thief, explores a close but wary friendship between two women who have known each other from childhood. 

Belinda McKeon And Samantha Harvey

Beckett, in his writing, was always interested in innovation, in pushing the boundaries, as he demonstrated in prose, theatre, poetry, television, radio, film, and video art. In recent interviews, Eimear McBride has spoken of how in her writing, she has been 'trying to dig out parts of human life that cannot be expressed in a straightforward way' and 'of needing to make language do something else' and in this festival conversation, she discusses these ideas further. 
Eimear McBride's debut novel, A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, written with singular intensity acute sensitivity and mordant wit, won the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. 
"Eimear McBride is that old fashioned thing, a genius, in that she writes truth-spilling, uncompromising and brilliant prose that can be, on occasion, quite hard to read...The adventurous reader, however, will find that they have a real book on their hands, a live one, a book that is not like any other." - Anne Enright 


Eimear McBride

Lectures, conversations, and presentations from our artists, writers, academics, and other specialists here at the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival. 

HDEIBF