Creative Minds at Birmingham, the School of EDACS Writers and Artists Distinguished Speaker Series, welcomed writer Bernard MacLaverty on 21 November 2013 where he spoke and read from his collections of works at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts.
Bernard MacLaverty was born in Belfast 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, for two years in the mid-eighties, Writer-in-Residence at the University of Aberdeen.
After living for a time in Edinburgh and the Isle of Islay he now lives in Glasgow. He is a member of Aosdana in Ireland and is Visiting Writer/Professor at the University of Strathclyde.
Currently he is employed as a teacher of creative writing on a postgraduate course in prose fiction run by the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen.
Since the publication of Secrets and Other Stories in 1977, Bernard MacLaverty has been celebrated as one of the finest living short-story writers. Writing in the New York Times, William Boyd summoned the shades of Yeats, Joyce and Flann O'Brien, insisting that 'MacLaverty sits perfectly comfortably' in their company. The Guardian simply said 'MacLaverty is a master.'
The Collected Short Stories (released 14 November 2013) includes most of Secrets, A Time to Dance, The Great Profundo, Walking the Dog and Matters of Life & Death.
0:00:12 - Introduction by Professor Michael Toolan
0:02:37 - Bernard MacLaverty
0:04:18 - 'Walking the Dog'
0:22:00 - 'The Clinic'