Mike McCormack 'This Plague of Souls' in conversation with Bill Herbert

A former prisoner returns home: a strange journey beckons. Anyone who reads Mike McCormack will come away changed, more attuned to the beauty and pain of our everyday lives; more awake to the limitations of organised religion against the infinitude of faith; more aware of what it means to be relentlessly mortal, and more alive for that. This is an unmissable event featuring one of literature’s foremost voices, whose work combines deep compassion with a powerful critique of society’s rules.

Mike McCormack comes from the west of Ireland and is the author of two collections of short stories and four novels. His works include Solar Bones (Tramp Press, 2016), which won the Goldsmiths Prize, the Bord Gais Energy Irish Novel of the Year and Book of the Year, and the International Dublin Literary Award. Solar Bones was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2017. His books have also won the Rooney Prize for Literature and been selected by the New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year. He is a member of Aosdána, the affiliation of creative artists in Ireland.

Bill Herbert is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Newcastle University.

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