Writer Tara West (in conversation with Glenn Patterson)

Dr Tara West is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. Her first novel, Fodder, was published by Blackstaff Press in 2002 and her second novel, Poets Are Eaten as a Delicacy in Japan was published by Liberties Press in 2014. Her memoir of depression and recovery, The Upside of Down, was published by Dalzell Press in 2020. Tara has recently completed writing her third novel, Inventionland, due for publication in 2025.

Glenn Patterson is a Belfast novelist and writer for screen, stage and radio. With Colin Carberry he wrote the film (and stage musical) Good Vibrations, based on the life and times of legendary Belfast music lover, Terri Hooley, who inadvertently became a punk impresario in the midst of the Troubles. His most recent book is, Two Summers, a pair of novellas set in Belfast and New York. He is the Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.