Writer Sally Rooney on Turning Life into Novels Louisiana Channel

Famous Irish writer Sally Rooney explains her desire to write novels about the life she leads: “It didn't come from any particular fascination with my own life, it was just the only life I had. .”

In this video, Sally Rooney explains that her first two novels, Conversations with Friends and Normal People, were inspired by her own experiences at Dublin University: "I feel like I need to know something really well thing before being able to understand this type of novel. observations that interest me as a writer," she says and elaborates: "To be able to tell a story in a place, not so much a geographic place, but in a community, I have to have a very strong sense of how people in this community, behave.

Sally Rooney explains that she sees the world through what she calls a Marxist framework and that her two novels explore social structures: "When there are two people alone in a room, no one thinks about class and kind, but the structures are there," she says. Rooney's books also talk about social class through her characters: "The people I write about tend to be in precarious economic situations. They've usually made college education like me, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are financially stable and secure.

“I really struggle to explain why I'm interested in the things I'm interested in,” Rooney reflects. In her writing, she tends to throw obstacles at her characters to see how they react and evolve:
“I wonder if it’s because the character is a projection of me.” The connection between her and her characters is obvious: “I need to feel like I can learn something from my experiences because otherwise I don't know what they are. Maybe it’s a way of consoling myself for the lack of meaning in life,” she says and adds: “I feel like I have a duty to write. »

Sally Rooney (born 1991) is an Irish writer. Rooney is the author of Conversations with Friends (2017) and Normal People (2018). The latter won 'Irish Novel of the Year' at the Irish Book Awards as well as the Costa Book Award, which Rooney is the youngest novelist to receive. Rooney is also the winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2017. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta and The London Review of Books. Additionally, she is the editor of the Irish literary journal The Stinging Fly.

Sally Rooney was interviewed by Kathrine Tschemerinsky at the Louisiana Literature Festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, August 2018. In the video, Sally Rooney reads from her novel Conversations with Friends.

Camera: Jacob Solbakken
Produced and edited by: Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2019
Supported by Den AP Møllerske Fond

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CHAPTERS:
00:00 University life
03:43 From adolescence to young adult
06:27 Marxism and social structures
12:33 How to write
17:43 Seeing yourself in your characters
24:58 When the book is finished