I'm still in the mood for author photos, so here are some of Eimear McBride. I made her novel A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing a set text for the first-years' introductory module, 'Literature and Identity', a year after it was published, certain that it would amaze, delight, horrify and endure for years to come (I think I've been vindicated). We invited Eimear to talk to the students and give a public reading and interview in the evening. She was amazing with the students: drawing them out, explaining her artistic practice, telling them the reality of being a writer with a vision despite the setbacks, and filling in the cultural gaps between them and her. She was also very very funny (in my heavily annotated copy of the novel, she wrote 'all your theories about my book are wrong': I think she was joking), despite the grim subject matter of her novel. The public lecture was similar: I asked a very bright colleague to do the 'in conversation' bit, and the talk flowed beautifully. It turned out that Eimear is also a huge fan of melancholic 90s indie, so we paid her in money but also in Asphalt Ribbons bootlegs.
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