...the patron saint of...
I hope that this prompt enables writers to envision some need or lack in the world which needs presiding over and that the writers will be able to dramatize that need or want. I would be very interested in seeing what sort of character steps forward to take charge of it and become the central figure in its story.
Mike McCormack
ABOUT MIKE:
Mike McCormack lectures in Creative Writing and is the author of four novels - Crowe's Requiem (1998), Notes from a Coma (2005), Solar Bones (2016) and This Plague of Souls (2023) and two collections of short stories - Getting It in the Head (1996) and Forensic Songs (2012). He is the Director of the MA (Writing).
In 1996 his debut collection Getting it in the Head was awarded the Rooney Prize for Literature and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In 2006 Notes from a Coma was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award. In 2016 Solar Bones was awarded the Goldsmiths Prize and both the Irish Novel of the Year and Book of the Year Award; it was also long-listed for the 2017 Man Booker Prize. In 2018 it was awarded the International Dublin Literary Award. In 2022 a Rough Magic production of Solar Bones played successfully at the Abbey Theatre for ten days. His work has been translated into several languages and in 2019 he was elected to Aosdána.