Louise Kennedy: 'There were multiple bomb attacks on our family pub, one in 73 and one in 74'

Louise Kennedy: "My greatest quality is making other people feel comfortable."

I grew up in a small town on the edge of Belfast where my father had a pub. We belonged to a fairly small Catholic community that made up about 10%.

When I was 12, my family left the North and moved to the south. There were multiple bomb attacks on our family pub, one in ‘73 and one in ‘74.

A few doors up the road from our house was a pair of sisters. One of my earliest memories is being in their house eating pink wafer biscuits in the living room. I don’t know how I ended up there. It wasn’t until later that I realised they were watching my mother running up and down the street looking for me. My mother was really upset. At some point, they opened the front door and I went back out.

I don’t think I’m any different now than I ever was. There has been a lot of happenstance or luck in me becoming a writer. Leaving the North did something to my relationship with language that didn’t mean anything until I started writing — and that happened very late. I literally hadn’t written anything until I was 47 and I’m 55 now.

Leaving the North made me an outsider wherever I go. If you are someone who never quite belongs in the place where you find yourself, you see things in a different way.

When we were children, if we were hurt and started whinging, we didn’t get any attention. But if we were funny or entertaining, we got a lot of attention for that. That expectation — in some way — led to my storytelling.

I’ve had cancer a couple of times in the last few years. I’m still in treatment, but these have really been the best years of my life.

My teens in school were miserable. Secondary school can be a very deadening time for your intellect and your soul. I got a lot of praise for that sort of thing (storytelling) and in my childhood, that was certainly something I was very proud of.

My friend Úna Mannion is the one I always turn to. If I have doubts about anything, whether it’s advice, writing or anything, I always run it past her.

My sister Joanne has been amazing. She’s driven across the country with food, she’ll hoover around the place and she’s brought me to appointments.

The life lesson I would pass on is that it’s unreasonable to expect 17 or 18-year-olds to know exactly what they’re going to do with the rest of their lives. I did a social science degree when I finished school and presumed I’d be a social worker, but I wasn’t right for that.

I learned to cook and I spent nearly 30 years working in restaurants. My last shift in a restaurant was about five years ago.

I went to college at 48 to Queen’s to do a master’s and I stayed on to do a PhD. The greatest advice I’ve been given was that it’s never too late and I’d like to pass that on to young people.

I’ve only learned recently to have gratitude. I never thought I’d be a person like that. I always thought I’d be a bit negative but it seems not.

It’s no harm to have lived a bit as well. I read a collection of short stories last year and the author was 80. I’m absolutely not disrespecting young people who can write, but it just didn’t occur to me.

I’d like to be remembered as someone who told the truth. And I try not to be an asshole; I try.

I really wish I had gotten over my anxiety earlier.

I’ve gotten better at that because of writing — it started off with reading my work in my writer’s group to a small number of people.

I’m mortified at the condition we’ve left the world in for future generations. I try not to waste things, but that’s just not enough.

My greatest quality is making other people feel comfortable.

Cooking is my greatest skill. I cook Lebanese food because I lived in Beirut for about two and a half years in the 90s.

The kindness of people really surprises me. Last year when I was sick, people who I thought wouldn’t have noticed or cared that I wasn’t well were really lovely.

The safety of my children preoccupies my mind more than most things. For their generation, they’ve had no peace from the internet. They have some perspective but it’s something that still worries me because they understand technology way better than I do.

I worry about their immediate safety too. If my son is on a night out — if he is going to be assaulted or if my daughter comes home alone one night. I always say: “Don’t buy fast food after midnight.”

In lots of ways, my life really hasn’t changed that much. I’m in the kitchen now and it’s freezing because I don’t want to put the heating on.

If I went down a different fork in the road, I may have lived a very quiet life. That’s not to say it’s all been rock and roll but if I’d gone teaching, I might have gotten bored very quickly.

If I didn’t go to Beirut, I might not have gotten the confidence to open up my own restaurant when I got back. That really opened up the world to me.

• Louise Kennedy and Anne Enright will be in conversation with Glenn Patterson at the final event of Cúirt International Festival of Literature on Saturday, April 23 in Galway Town Hall Theatre. cuirt.ie