Bookworm Literary Festival 2014: Eoin McNamee
I'm always a bit timid attending book talks for which we have not done our homework, so to speak. I feel disrespectfully unprepared, a holdover from my college days. For this year's Bookworm Literary Festival, the authors we have seen and will be seeing in the children's program are all new to us. Some of their books we have found on sale only just this week at the Bookworm. In at least one instance (so far) the books are not even published in the US, so we would not have come across them otherwise. Instead we try to look at each of these events as an opportunity to meet our next favorite book.
I mean, what better introduction than by the author himself?
This morning, we enjoyed an hour with Eoin McNamee whose The Navigator trilogy makes for good candidates for next favorite books.
More after the jump
Eoin McNamee is an Irish writer who, after publishing many books for adults, decided he needed to write something for his own children, which has resulted in his recent venture into the YA genre. He knew he wanted to be a writer during his own childhood in Kilkeel, Northern Ireland. He had read The Chronicles of Narnia and believed that when he grew up he could continue the series beyond C.S. Lewis' own seven books. He later realized that writers found their own inspiration in their own imaginations (a point he emphasized again later to his young audience as an encouragement). However, the Lewis connections were there throughout his life. He was delighted as a child to learn that Lewis was originally from Belfast in Northern Ireland, and then as an adult that this beloved author visualized Narnia himself as Kilkeel. McNamee grew up in Narnia, but didn't even know it.
For the Navigator series, McNamee drew upon Kilkeel and its unique setting, though not in the same way his hero Lewis did. As a child he often played in a flat area near a river beneath an abandoned workhouse on a high above cliff. His playground was the untended and unmarked graves of those who died in the workhouse. He never encountered any ghosts there (he would sometimes at other times in his life; he is Irish, after all, and at least one possible ghost encounter would lead him to writing YA fiction, ), but he sensed something rather heavy about this place. In The Navigator books, he wanted to transform the sadness into something else, something magical.
McNamee read several passages from the first book of the trilogy, also titled The Navigator. There's something quite amazing about hearing something read in the author's voice. It will be difficult to shake his lilting narration once I eventually read it, not that I'd want to.
Several times in between passages he described something from his life upon which he incorporated into the story, in addition to the setting. Two of the protagonists are named for his own children. A man who terrified him intentionally when he was just a kid became one of his villains (That's the great thing about being a writer, he said. You can exact revenge like this). He was also able to pay tribute to a man that meant a great deal to him as a child, extending friendship to him across the Catholic-Protestant divide during such a violent time in Northern Ireland. The man's name was Wesley, and Wesley is an important character in The Navigator.
The Wesley story actually is more than just McNamee's relationship with him which only lasted for a short time years ago. He had lost touch with this Wesley over the years, but hadn't forgotten him. One time he was in Kilkeel with his children and they came upon an amazing sight. There standing in the middle of a neighborhood that had been demolished stood a very tall tree dazzling with Christmas lights. All that was left was a parking lot and this incredible tree. They stopped and stared at it for a while, dazed by the beauty and unexpectedness of it all. Sometime after that, he happened to see in a newspaper that Wesley had passed away. He wrote a letter of condolence to Wesley's daughters, conveying to them how much Wesley had meant to him a long time ago. One of the daughters wrote back to him in thanks, and in her letter went on to describe how important bridging the divide was to her father. Wesley, a Protestant, came together with another friend, a Catholic, to plant and nurture a tree in Kilkeel. One day, someone happened to hang a string of lights on the tree. More people added more lights, and the tree grew, bringing more people together. McNamee then realized that he had to put Wesley in his book. (I'm hoping my retelling of this is coherent. I tried to capture the order in which McNamee related it, important for the way things were discovered. And it made me mist up a little, truth be told).
When it came time to sign books at the end, McNamee, like Nick Earls on Monday, patiently signed every single book of the trilogy for my kids. Myles was particularly happy that, after spelling out his name to make it clear that it is a "y" and not an "i," McNamee commented that it was a very Irish name spelled that way. McNamee was then less surprised we also had a B-R-I-G-I-D with us, but still, the kids were able to shine a little Irish pride just in time for St. Patrick's Day.
Myles, having already plowed through the Word Hunters books this week started right in to The Navigator immediately. By bedtime, he was nearly done with the first book. We certainly have met our share of next favorite books already this week.
I mean, what better introduction than by the author himself?
This morning, we enjoyed an hour with Eoin McNamee whose The Navigator trilogy makes for good candidates for next favorite books.
More after the jump
Eoin McNamee is an Irish writer who, after publishing many books for adults, decided he needed to write something for his own children, which has resulted in his recent venture into the YA genre. He knew he wanted to be a writer during his own childhood in Kilkeel, Northern Ireland. He had read The Chronicles of Narnia and believed that when he grew up he could continue the series beyond C.S. Lewis' own seven books. He later realized that writers found their own inspiration in their own imaginations (a point he emphasized again later to his young audience as an encouragement). However, the Lewis connections were there throughout his life. He was delighted as a child to learn that Lewis was originally from Belfast in Northern Ireland, and then as an adult that this beloved author visualized Narnia himself as Kilkeel. McNamee grew up in Narnia, but didn't even know it.
For the Navigator series, McNamee drew upon Kilkeel and its unique setting, though not in the same way his hero Lewis did. As a child he often played in a flat area near a river beneath an abandoned workhouse on a high above cliff. His playground was the untended and unmarked graves of those who died in the workhouse. He never encountered any ghosts there (he would sometimes at other times in his life; he is Irish, after all, and at least one possible ghost encounter would lead him to writing YA fiction, ), but he sensed something rather heavy about this place. In The Navigator books, he wanted to transform the sadness into something else, something magical.
McNamee read several passages from the first book of the trilogy, also titled The Navigator. There's something quite amazing about hearing something read in the author's voice. It will be difficult to shake his lilting narration once I eventually read it, not that I'd want to.
Several times in between passages he described something from his life upon which he incorporated into the story, in addition to the setting. Two of the protagonists are named for his own children. A man who terrified him intentionally when he was just a kid became one of his villains (That's the great thing about being a writer, he said. You can exact revenge like this). He was also able to pay tribute to a man that meant a great deal to him as a child, extending friendship to him across the Catholic-Protestant divide during such a violent time in Northern Ireland. The man's name was Wesley, and Wesley is an important character in The Navigator.
The Wesley story actually is more than just McNamee's relationship with him which only lasted for a short time years ago. He had lost touch with this Wesley over the years, but hadn't forgotten him. One time he was in Kilkeel with his children and they came upon an amazing sight. There standing in the middle of a neighborhood that had been demolished stood a very tall tree dazzling with Christmas lights. All that was left was a parking lot and this incredible tree. They stopped and stared at it for a while, dazed by the beauty and unexpectedness of it all. Sometime after that, he happened to see in a newspaper that Wesley had passed away. He wrote a letter of condolence to Wesley's daughters, conveying to them how much Wesley had meant to him a long time ago. One of the daughters wrote back to him in thanks, and in her letter went on to describe how important bridging the divide was to her father. Wesley, a Protestant, came together with another friend, a Catholic, to plant and nurture a tree in Kilkeel. One day, someone happened to hang a string of lights on the tree. More people added more lights, and the tree grew, bringing more people together. McNamee then realized that he had to put Wesley in his book. (I'm hoping my retelling of this is coherent. I tried to capture the order in which McNamee related it, important for the way things were discovered. And it made me mist up a little, truth be told).
When it came time to sign books at the end, McNamee, like Nick Earls on Monday, patiently signed every single book of the trilogy for my kids. Myles was particularly happy that, after spelling out his name to make it clear that it is a "y" and not an "i," McNamee commented that it was a very Irish name spelled that way. McNamee was then less surprised we also had a B-R-I-G-I-D with us, but still, the kids were able to shine a little Irish pride just in time for St. Patrick's Day.
Myles, having already plowed through the Word Hunters books this week started right in to The Navigator immediately. By bedtime, he was nearly done with the first book. We certainly have met our share of next favorite books already this week.
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