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ABSTRACT
In this creative exposition on the process of researching and remembering, novelist and short story writer Heather Richardson examines the motives and methodologies behind her first attempt at writing memoir. The narrative focuses on the experiences of one ordinary family during the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ in the 1970s and 1980s, exploring the discrepancies between the child’s-eye-view memory, and a more problematic adult understanding in the present day. The article considers how the conflicting drivers of concealment and curiosity feed into the creative output of a writer who emerges from this background.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Heather Richardson lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is one of three featured writers in Short Story Introductions 1 (Lagan Press 2007), and had a story included in Brace: A New Generation in Short Fiction (Comma Press 2008). Her fiction and poetry has also been published in magazines in the UK and Ireland, including The Stinging Fly, QWF, pulp.net, Black Mountain Review and In the Red. She was runner up in the 2007 Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition with the poem ‘Wedding at Sea’. Her first novel, Magdeburg (Lagan Press 2010), is set in Germany during the Thirty Years War.