Anne Enright and Penelope Lively: sex, love and families

They included a number of fascinating meetings of past Booker winners, such as this one in which Anne Enright and Penelope Lively came together for a conversation about family dynamics, memory and desire.

Dublin-born Enright took the Booker Prize in 2007 with The Gathering, and was later long-listed for the award with 2016’s The Green Road. Lively has appeared on the Booker Prize shortlist three times; in 1977 for her first novel The Road to Lichfield, in 1984 for According to Mark and in 1987, when she won the Prize with Moon Tiger.

In this podcast, recorded at Man Booker 50, and chaired by BBC broadcaster Martha Kearney, the authors discuss how the past impacts on the present and how memory affects perception.

‘Writers mutate through life, just like anybody else’

Penelope Lively

As well as winning Anne Enright the Booker Prize, The Gathering was named Irish Novel of the Year and won the Irish Fiction Award. The Green Road was also named Irish Novel of the Year, was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and the International Dublin Literary Award, and won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.

Enright has written five other novels – including 2012’s The Forgotten Waltz which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction – as well as publishing three collections of stories, and the non-fiction book, Making Babies. She lives and works in her home city of Dublin and from 2015 to 2018, was the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction.

Penelope Lively first came to prominence as a writer of children’s fiction, winning the Carnegie Medal in 1973 for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, and the Whitbread Children’s Book Award for 1976’s A Stitch In Time. Her success continued as she moved into adult fiction, with her debut The Road to Lichfield earning her, the first of three Booker Prize shortlist spots. The book which ultimately won Lively the Booker Prize in 1987, Moon Tiger, was also shortlisted for 2018’s Golden Man Booker Prize .

Lively has written more than 20 books for children, 17 novels, five collections of short stories, and a further five non-fiction books. Having been born in Cairo where she spent her formative years, she now lives in London.

This talk was just a small part of a weekend-long festival of talks, readings and masterclasses featuring leading authors, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Booker Prize, here at Southbank Centre.