Author Reading: Glenn Patterson reads from Gull (2016)

Northern Irish author Glenn Patterson will read (among others) from his latest novel, Gull. Gull centres on John DeLorean's automobile factory in Belfast, which - for four short years, from 1978 to 1982 - produced high-end sports cars for the American market. In the midst of the Northern Irish civil war, the Belfast factory managed to build almost 9,000 of the iconic gull-winged sports cars that would be propelled to international fame through the Back to the Future-films. Full of wit, humour and empathy, Gull sheds light on the local and global events of the time which contributed to the early demise of the DeLorean factory in Belfast.

Glenn Patterson is one of the most important (Northern) Irish writers of his generation. He was born in Belfast in 1961 and his extraordinary relationship to the city of his birth continues to inform both his fictional and non-fictional writing. Patterson is the author of ten novels, the most recent of which is Gull, published in January this year. He has also published two books of essays, Lapsed Protestant (2006) and Here’s Me Here (2015); a memoir, Once Upon a Hill: Love in Troubled Times (2008); the screenplay for the film Good Vibrations (2013; with Colin Carberry); as well as the libretto for the Belfast Opera (2016). Patterson teaches Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast.