“It’s hard to give advice to anyone,” Colm Tóibin says. “I’ve never known a young writer to come up to you to say: ‘Do you have any advice for me?’. They are normally coming up to say ‘Well, my second novel needs a blurb. Could you have it by Wednesday?’.”

Colm Tóibín (b. 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet. His notable works include The Heather Blazing (1992), The Story of the Night (1996), The Blackwater Lightship (1999), The Master (2004), Mothers and Sons (2006), Brooklyn (2009), The Empty Family (2010), Nora Webster (2014), and Long Island (2024). Tóibín has received numerous prestigious awards, including the 2004 Lambda Literary Award and the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for The Master, as well as the 2009 Costa Novel Award for Brooklyn. He was awarded the Irish PEN Award in 2011 for his contribution to Irish literature and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize multiple times. Currently, Tóibín is a professor at Columbia University in the U.S.

Colm Tóibín was interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel at the Louisiana Literature Festival in August 2024 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark.

Camera: Simon Wehye
Edited and produced by Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2024

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