Growing up I wanted to be a football commentator. Jackie Fullerton lived across the road. I saw him on TV discussing the Saturday afternoon fixtures and sometimes in Spar buying milk.
I didn’t know any writers. Ballymena in the 1980s wasn’t a very literary place. All the writers I read were dead or living in exciting places like Paris, London or New York.
Though I devoured half a dozen books per week, I never considered becoming a writer. It’s hard to aspire to something you cannot see. I was 25 before I picked up a pen and made my first clumsy foray into writing.
I’d moved to Portland, Oregon, a city literally teeming with writers. I was a seasoned regular, sitting at the feet of every author who visited Powell’s bookstore, from Patti Smith to Douglas Coupland and Dave Eggers. I had living, breathing – occasionally approachable – models for what I wanted to be.
Furthermore, I’d found my tribe: a bunch of musicians, filmmakers and fledgling poets who shared my off-kilter way of seeing the world. They were always up for artsy chats over coffee or hipster beer. Most importantly, I’d identified the lack in myself.
The first time I finished a short story, (though fully aware it was terrible, the kind of overly florid writing that would make Raymond Carver cry), I could tell I’d finally found the best version of myself. Julia Pimenta Galiza de Freutas, in her story, Margaret Roche: The Writer in Me , sums this feeling up when she writes, “I knew I wanted to w.