Life
1961- ; b. and ed. Belfast; MA in Creative Writing at University of East
Anglia; community writer for Lisburn and Craigavon, 1989-91; novels, Burning
Your Own (1988), in which ten-year old Mal Martin of the Protestant
Larkview estate befriends Francy Hagan, a Catholic whose family have been
driven from their home in the Troubles; Fat Lad (1992), shortlisted
for GPA in 1992,a novel in which Drew Linden, a graduate, returns to Belfast
to run a Waterstone-style bookshop in the Troubles, amid personal disingenuities
in his sexual life and atavistic memories of the Titanic in his community;
shortlisted for the GPA Award; settled at Cregagh Rd., Belfast; Black
Night on Black Thunder Mountain (1995), a social ‘symposium’
based on a plot of kidnap; settled in Manchester, c.1993, returning to
Belfast in 1995 to act as presenter of BBC Arts programme; International
(1999), set in renowned Belfast hotel in 1967; issued Number 5
(2003), the fictional history of a Belfast terrace house and its occupants
from the 1950s; That Which Was (2004), the narrative of Ken Avery, a Presbyterian minister who is caught up in the confession of a “Troubles” murder. OCIL
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Works
Burning Your Own (London: Chatto & Windus 1988, 1994); Fat
Lad (London: Chatto & Windus 1992); Black Night on Black Thunder
Mountain (London: Chatto & Windus 1995), 224[215]pp.; The International
(Anchor 1999), 316pp.; Number 5 (London: Hamish Hamilton 2003), 307pp.; That Which Was (London: Hamish Hamilton 2004), 286pp. See also an autobiographical essay in Fortnight
(Aug. 1990).
Anthology, ‘Roaches’, in Steve MacDonogh, ed., Irish Short Stories (Dingle: Mounteagle Press 1998); Number 5 (London: Hamish Hamilton 2003), 307pp. Also ‘I Am a Northern Irish Novelist’, in Ian A. Bell, ed., Images of Nationhood in Contemporary British Fiction (Wales UP 1995) [q.pp.; c.150]
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Criticism
Carlo Gebler, ‘Bright Young Thing’, review of Glenn Patterson,
Black Night at Big Thunder Mountain (Chatto & Windus 1995),
in Fortnight Review 343 (Oct. 1995), pp.32-33 [with photo-port.].
Tess Hurson, The State We’re In, ‘Patterson & Wilson’, BBC Radio Ulster Broadcast [1992].
Eve Patten, ‘Fiction in Conflict: Northern Ireland’s Prodigal Novelists’, in Ian A. Bell, ed., Peripheral Visions: Images of Nationhood in Contemporary British Fiction (Wales UP 1995), cp.130.
Michael Parker, ‘Book of Hours’, in Special Feature: Prose, Honest Ulsterman, No. 101 (Spring 1996), pp.7-14 [essay on Patterson]; Klaus-Gunnar Schneider, ‘Irishness and Postcoloniality in Glenn Patterson’s Burning Your Own’, in Irish Studies Review, 6, 1 (April 1998), pp.55-62.
Richard Mills, ‘“Nothing Has to Die”: An Interview with Glenn Patterson’, Bill Lazenblatt, ed., Writing Ulster [‘Northern Narratives’], No. 6 (1999), pp.113-39.
Gasahiko Yahta: ‘From Despair to Hope: Glenn Patterson’s Portrayals of Belfast in Burning Your Own (1888) and The International (1999)’, in Journal of Beppu University, Junior College,No. 20 (Feb. 2000).
Paula Shields, ‘Patterson’s Big Theme: When Ulster was Normal’ [interview feature], in Fortnight [Belfast] (May 2003), pp.20-21.
Feature article on Patterson in Sunday Times (?Jan. 1995) [cited by Damian Smyth in Linenhall Review, Jan. 1995].
Gerry Smyth, The Novel and the Nation: Studies in the New Irish Fiction (London: Pluto Press 1997) [on Burning Your Own and Fat Lad], pp.126-29, 129-31.
John Goodby, ‘Reading Protestant Writing: Representations of the Troubles in the Poetry of Derek Mahon and Glenn Patterson’s Burning Your Own’, in Kathleen Devine, ed., Modern Irish Writers and the Wars (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1999), cp.225.
[Shirley Kelly,] ‘Everyone was Terrified of Angela’ [interview], in Books Ireland (May 2003), pp.109-10.
Paula Shields, ‘Patterson’s Big Theme: When Ulster was Normal’, in Fortnight (April 2003), pp.20-21.
Aveen McManus, “Narratives of Childhood - A Comparative Study” (MA Diss., Univ. of Ulster 2005) [with Mary Costello, Frances Molloy, Jennifer Johnston, David Park, Seamus Deane, Edna O’Brien, Patrick MacCabe].
Klaus Gunnar Schneider, ‘Irishness and Postcoloniality in
Glenn Patterson’s Burning Your Own’, in Irish Studies
Review, Vo. 6, No. 1 (1998), pp.55-62.
Colin Graham, ‘Liminal Spaces: Post-colonial Theories and Ireland’, in Irish Review, No. 16 (Autumn/Winter 11994), pp.29-43.
Edna Longley, Irish Times, 14 Dec. 1993). See also Irish Review, 15 (Spring 1994), p.4.]
Helen Meany talks to novelist Glenn Patterson ...’ (Irish Times, ?17 Aug. 1995).
Paula Shields, ‘Patterson’s Big Theme: When Ulster was Normal’ [interview feature], in Fortnight [Belfast] (May 2003), pp.20-21.
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Notes
Anthologies incl. Adrian Rice, Signals: Anthology of Poetry
and Prose [Abbey Grammar School Arts Week, Feb. 1997] (Newry: Abbey
Press 1998); Steve MacDonogh, ed., Irish Short Stories (Dingle:
Mounteagle Press 1998), incls. ‘Roach’.
Books in Print (1994), Burning Your Own (London: Chatto & Windus 1988, 1994) [0 7011 3291 4]; Fat Lad (London: Chatto & Windus 1992) [0 7011 3705 3].
Burning Your Own concerns 12 of July bonfire on Protestant
estate; central character and narration Mal; elaborate naming of all the
families; Mal’s friend Francy, a Catholic who has taken over the
local dump; Catholic Derrybeg and Protestant Larkview; Mal’s vocabulary
of ideas includes allusions to Joyce’s ‘old sow that eats her
farrow’ (p.149). NOTE also, central character of Fat Lad is
Drew Linden who returns to take up job in Bookstore. A G. Patterson illustrated
Martin Waddell’s Stories from the Bible (London: F. Lincoln
1993), a children’s author freq. illustrated by Ron Baird.
Namesake? A G. Patterson illustrated Martin Waddell’s Stories from the Bible (London: F. Lincoln 1993), a children’s author freq. illustrated by Ron Baird.
Burning Your Own (1988): Francy burns the centre pole of
the 12th July bonfire, hidden in a nearby forest; forced out of the estate
with his family, he burns the local dump and sets himself on fire by accident
as he hurls the burning objects at his neighbours, incl. Mal; next morning
mal sees a graffita on the way: “Francy Hagan, Rest in Pieces”
in capital letters.
Black Night at Big Thunder Mountain (1995), set at the construction site of Euro-Disney in France; concerns Belfast construction woker, German canteen assit., and an American madman who takes them both hostage in plotting to subvert the construction project.
The International (1999), describes three human dramas that unfold on a Saturday in January 1967 in a Belfast notel of that name, going on teo relate how the persons involved experience the Troubles in the ensuring years. The protagonists is Danny Hamilton, who is visited in his room by Bob and Natalie Vance, two newly married wealthy Americans.
No. 5 (2003), set in second half of twentieth-century Belfast - grim and comic for the McGoverns and the Tans whose seemingly mundane lives centre on a terraced house; leading characters and successive occupants of the house are Stella, Rodney, Tan, Catriona, Mel and Toni. (See “First Flush”, Books Ireland, May 2003.)
Public Reading: Glenn Patterson gave a reading of his work at at the Ulster Arts Club (Nov. 30 1994).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)