1. When did you think about writing as a career and what were your first steps into it?
I was always writing as a kid: my diary, poems, stories. I always knew I wanted to write but it wasnt until my late 20s that I got serious about it all and began to attend workshops and send out pieces for publication.
2. Best gigs you've been to?
Rufus Wainwright at Radio City Music Hall, New York; New Order at Electric Picnic; Regina Spektor in Whelans, Dublin.
3. Fantasy birthday party band of choice?
Rufus and Martha Wainwright. Im a huge fan of both and they do a great job when they sing together.
4. The record you'd take to a desert island?
Blue by Joni Mitchell.
5. And the book?
The Complete Stories by Flannery OConnor. Such a brilliant writer; her characters are funny, cruel, colloquial. She would make me laugh and cry.
6. Top three films?
Thelma and Louise, Strictly Ballroom, A Room with a View.
7. Worst film you've seen?
Untamed Heart, starring Christian Slater, about a man with a baboons heart. Truly awful.
8. Favourite authors?
Edna OBrien brilliant on the shaming of women in rural Ireland; Anne Enright spiky, funny and pin-sharp on modern Ireland; Emily Dickinson insightful, concise poems on all the big and small things
9. Sports you most enjoy and top team?
I dont like sport but have been known to shed a tear when certain teams win All-Irelands!
10. Ideal holiday destination?
New York. I got married there and just love the place: its familiar but different, has brilliant art, bookshops and veggie food.
11. Pet hate?
People who always arrive late.
12. What's your favourite:
Dinner? Chargrilled halloumi or chickpea curry.
Dessert? Tiramisu
Drink? Rioja or Chianti
13. Who is your best friend and how do you know each other?
Karen and I met on a FAS course in computers in 1995 and weve been through a ton since: births, marriages, divorce, death all manner of fun and sadness. We tell each other everything.
14. Is there a God?
Not for me. When my sister was dying she told me she knew there was nothing beyond; that finished it for me definitively. I wish I did believe in something, though; people seem to take huge comfort from the notion of a higher presence that would be nice.
:: Nuala N Chonchir appears at the Crescent Arts Centre along with Henrietta McKervey on Monday at 8.30pm, as part of the Belfast Book Festival. Her novel The Closet of Savage Mementoes is out now.
