I was fascinated by the lack of a word for a parent who has lost a child. We have no word in English. I thought for sure there'd be a word in Irish but there is none. And then I looked in several other languages and could not find one, until I found the word Sh'khol in Hebrew. I'm still not sure why so many languages don't have a word for this sort of bereavement, this shadowing.

I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world.

I write about what I know; and I write about things that are new to me, and that I didn't know before.

One small cloud, cast out by the herd, limps away to the west.

Anakana Schofield is part of a new wave of wonderful Irish fiction-international in scope and electrically alive.

There are moments we return to, now and always. Family is like water - it has a memory of what it once filled, always trying to get back to the original stream.

I'm not so sure that I can teach people how to, you know, write dialogue or create plot or anything like that. But if I can get them and grab them by the scruff of the neck and say, you can do this, and if I see that fire in their eyes, that's when I think I know a writer.