In this anniversary episode of the Irish Itinerary Podcast Jan Carson and Katharina Rennhak take up their conversation where it all started a year ago in June 2020. Jan Carson looks back on one year of “writing and being a writer” in lockdown and reads from the works that were published during the last 12 months: Postcard Stories 2 (2020) and The Last Resort (2021). She reflects on the recurring phenomenon in her stories of characters who prefer books to people, on the effects of first-person and you-narrations, and on the historical significance of the textile industry in Northern Ireland. She talks about writing a radio drama, about the setting of The Last Resort as a microcosm of the Protestant Community in Northern Ireland, and about the magical and the real in fiction.

Listen back here