The Nerve is a podcast produced by the English department at South East Technological University Cork Road campus. Each episode brings together staff and students to discuss a range of topics, including English literature, cultural events and critical theory. Hosted by Dr Jenny O’Connor.
This episode features the award-winning Canadian author Alexander MacLeod. A Professor of Creative Writing at St Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Alexander has been published in the prestigious New Yorker and Granta magazines and has won the Atlantic Book Award, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the O.Henry Award. His first collection Light Lifting was published in 2010 and his latest, Animal Person, was released in 2022. Both collections explore the fragile connections that define us, the collision of the mundane and the extraordinary and the invisible forces that drive people to behave in unexpected ways. Alexander also facilitated a creative writing masterclass at SETU thanks to support from the Canadian Embassy, the Centre for Newfoundland and Labrador Studies at SETU, and the Department of Arts at SETU, Waterford. The event was organised by Dr Fiona Ennis in the Department of Arts.