Spending Heritage Week with local authors
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Photo: Author Jan Carson and Peter Hughes, Stock dept, Libraries NI
We celebrated Heritage Week in Belfast Central Library earlier this month with some special author guests in the 2nd floor setting of the new Contemporary Fiction Collection.
Wendy Erskine started us off for the week with a fab interview with my colleague Peter telling us all about
her debut novel which is coming out very soon. Up to now she has been known as a short story writer and she shared her journey of how she first got into print with Sweet Home and Dance Move. As an English teacher she has spent many years teaching about great writers and it is fitting that now she is becoming known in her own right. Look out for The Benefactors coming out soon.
[Photo: Author Wendy Erskine and Peter Hughes, Libraries NI]
Martina Devlin traveled up from Dublin to tell us all about her new novel Charlotte featuring Charlotte Brontes life through the eyes of her husband’s family in Ireland. Charlotte’s father, Patrick was brought up initially near Rathfriland and 
then was taken in by family in Banagher, Co Offaly. A clever man, he went to University in England and became Rector at Haworth where he married and reared his family. Charlotte married her father’s curate, Arthur Bell and travelled to Ireland on her honeymoon which is where the narrator of the story – Mary Nicholls - met her. Mary was to become Arthur’s second wife after Charlotte’s untimely death. A fascinating and well researched book retold as engaging fiction.
[Photo: Author Martina Devlin]
Children’s author Sheena Wilkinson entertained P7 pupils from nearby St Patrick’s Primary School with stories of how she came to be bookworm as a child and how this passion has now become her fulltime job.
Her inspirational stories prompted enthusiatic questions from the children- some of whom, we hope, will continue to read through into their teenage years and maybe try out writing down their own stories too..
[Photo: Author Sheena Wilkinson]
Jan Carson took time out of her busy schedule to spend time with us taking us through her love of magic realism, NI culture, writing short stories 
[Photo: Author Jan Carson and Peter Hughes, Libraries NI] and giving us a glimpse of her new novel featuring the intriguing concept of what could have happened if Lough Neagh had been drained as was proposed by Terence O’Neill in 1958. I am looking forward to reading about that! She also read part of a new story which has been included in her republished collection of short stories Children’s Children. The story features a support group for poltergeists which meets in Ards Shopping Centre!
The week was rounded off by an interview with Tony Macaulay of Paperboy fame. He talked about how his 
memoir became a surprising best seller leading to the sequels Breadboy and All Grow’d Up . The subsequent adaptation to the very successful stage musicals of all three books was an added bonus that he had never expected when he first sat down to recount his childhood memories of growing up in the 70’s and 80’s. He told us how he moved into fiction with his novel Belfast Gate and more recently with Kill the Devil, his joint venture with a young author from Rwanda.
All in all it was a great week of hearing from, and connecting with, local talent as well as putting our Contemporary Fiction Collection on the map.
Photos below:
1. Author Wendy Erskine
2. Jillian McFrederick, Libraries NI and author Tony Macauley
3. Author Wendy Erskine and Peter Hughes, Libraries NI
4. Author Martina Devlin and Sian Cairns
5. Author Sheena Wilkinson
6. Author Jan Carson
