Our friends at British Council Belgium interviewed novelist Stella Duffy last month on the occasion of the EWWC Brussels event:

“In Belgium for the first time last month, Stella was here to take part in the Brussels edition of the Edinburgh World Writers’ Conference (EWWC), a series of events bringing writers together across the globe to contribute to the growing debate about literature and its relationship to contemporary life. The theme of the debate in Brussels was “A National Literature?”, a subject on which Stella was keen to have her say. “The idea of there being a British national literature sort of confuses me anyway, making it ripe for a good discussion! The range of people in Britain is amazingly interesting – rather than there being a particular ‘national identity’, there are so many different ‘national identities’. One of the reasons the different regions of the UK are so important is because they didn’t used to speak the same language. There’s an incredible diversity in dialogue which comes through in prose, which is one of the things that makes British writing so exciting.”

Read the full interview here.