Laureate na nÓg Patricia Forde: ‘I get such a buzz from hearing these five-year-olds, totally fluent, even when there’s not a word of Irish at home’

When the children’s writer Patricia Forde was growing up in Galway in the 1960s, “there weren’t many Irish authors for me to read”, she says. A child with a vivid imagination, Forde loved books, “so it was Enid Blyton – that magic! – then fantasy, speculative fiction. I remember reading The Hobbit and the Narnia books, and being blown away by the idea that there were other worlds at the edges of our own.”

Living in the centre of Galway city, in a house that was more than 300 years old, Forde would look out of her bedroom window and imagine all the events that took place in the past in her local area: Grainne Mhaol attacking ships on the nearby seaboard, Oliver Cromwell’s troops waiting outside the city walls. “It was like a kind of time travel,” she says of those early years that shaped her imagination and would go on to shape her future. “I would look at places and know that there were amazing things that had happened there, but it was still the place where I lived.”

Forde still lives in Galway, and has made a unique contribution to the cultural life of the city in the intervening years. She started her professional life in the arts as an actor and director at the Irish-language theatre An Taibhdhearc, and went on to become a key member of the Macnas ensemble in the street-theatre company’s early years. In the 1990s she moved behind the scenes, serving as director of the Galway International Arts Festival, and initiating a dedicated family-arts strand during her tenure. That evolved into Baboró, which has grown to a two-week standalone arts festival for children that is held in the city in October every year.

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Inspired by her collaborative storytelling work with Macnas, Forde was also writing children’s books on the side. Her first was published in 1990, and she has published almost 30 books in the years since. The work is admirable in its range: from picture books to be read aloud, such as Fidget: The Wonder Dog, to short Irish-language books for young readers, such as her latest, An Mactíre Deireannach, to novels for teenagers, including the recently published sci-fi adventure The Girl Who Fell to Earth. Forde’s stature as a storyteller and advocate for children’s literature was acknowledged earlier this year with her announcement as Laureate na nÓg.

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Forde is the seventh Irish writer to hold the position, in which writers spend time connecting with children and the children’s-literature community in Ireland. Forde’s ambition for engaging with a young audience is shaped by her bilingualism and her own childhood love of fantasy worlds, the imagination of which became her favourite part of writing. “I love world building,” she says. “And I wanted to share that with the children. This idea of ‘Samhlaigh, samhlaigh’, making it up as you go along. It’s a good way to tap into children’s creativity.”

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Forde’s immediate predecessor, Áine Ní Ghlinn, was the first Irish-language laureate; Forde is delighted to have the opportunity to develop the work Ní Ghlinn did, extending the laureate’s reach into Irish-language schools, communities and families. “It is a very natural thing for me speak both languages,” Forde says, “and it is very natural for me to write in both languages too: I always know which language a story will be in because it comes to me either in Irish or English.

There are so many Gaelscoils, and I love going in and talking to the children there

“I was very lucky that, in the early stages of my writing, Futa Fata” – the Irish-language publisher of An Mactíre Deireannach – “opened up in Spidéal, publishing picture books in Irish for children, so it was possible to write in Irish and have someone take the book on. Things have come on so much now. There are so many Gaelscoils, and I love going in and talking to the children there. I get such a buzz from hearing these five- and six-year-olds totally fluent, even when there’s not a word of Irish at home.”

The second aspect of Forde’s new role revolves around making connections and supporting her fellow children’s-book creators, and she is keen to acknowledge how much the children’s-book industry in Ireland has changed from when she was a young reader and even a young writer, thanks to initiatives such as Laureate na nÓg.

Forde thinks it was a confidence thing. “For a long time writers didn’t have the confidence to set books in Ireland. But O’Brien Press did huge work breaking ground by publishing Irish authors. Now you have Little Island as well as Futa Fata. And it is much more usual to have books set in Ireland, even if they are being published in the UK. There is a greater acceptance that people are interested in different settings and cultures, and you have writers like Sinead O’Hart, Deirdre Sullivan and Catherine Doyle writing about Irish myth and folklore, and it’s a worldwide business.”

To this end, Forde sees the laureateship as an opportunity “to bring together other Irish writers and illustrators” on her journey around Ireland, “so that the children of Ireland are fully aware of the wonderful canon of Irish literature we have now. That is not to say that they shouldn’t read books from other countries – that would be ridiculous – but we have so many new writers that they might not know that I am excited to introduce them to.”

Forde benefited from this collegial approach during the tenure of previous laureates. She remembers travelling with Siobhán Parkinson, the inaugural holder of the post, to participate in an event at the National Library of Ireland and journeying by lifeboat to Tory Island with another laureate, Eoin Colfer, “where he nearly drowned. So I’ve been around the other projects [that the laureate programme has run], and it’s like a mobile festival. It involves many more people than just yourself.”

The honour, then, Forde concludes, is collective rather than personal: “It is not so much for the individual who holds the title but for the whole children’s books sector itself.”

The Girl Who Fell to Earth is published by Little Island. An Mactíre Deireannach is published by Futa Fata