Mountains to Sea for Kennedy's 'On Writing'

DO you want to be a writer? Novelist AL Kennedy’s book, On Writing, might be a guide. Kennedy will appear at next week’s Mountains to Sea book festival in Dublin.

Born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1965, Kennedy began writing in the 1980s, when, she says, she could earn “as much as £30 a year from it”. Her first collection of short stories was published in 1990. Her fifth novel, Day, won the Costa Book of the Year award in 2007.

Kennedy is insightful and, as someone who does stand-up, she has a dark, droll sense of humour. Writing, she says, has pitfalls: financial woes; dodgy diets, and, in her case, 10 years of back pain. It can be fantastic, but, she adds, it doesn’t always “suit a melancholic temperament,” so much time is spent alone or, given marketing demands, among strangers.