DBF Interviews: Arnold Thomas Fanning

Arnold Thomas Fanning’s short stories, articles, and essays have been published in The Dublin Review, Banshee, the Irish Times, the Sunday Business Post, Crazyhorse Magazine, The Phoenix Anthology of New Irish Writing, gorse, Longreads.com, and The Lonely Crowd, while a new essay is forthcoming in Paper Visual Art Journal. His work has also been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and RTÉ Radio 1 including for Arena and A Living Word. His most recent play McKenna’s Fort won the Oscar Wilde Award for Best New Writing in the 13th International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, and in 2017 he received an Arts Council Bursary in Literature. Mind on Fire: A Memoir of Madness and Recovery, his first book, is published by Penguin Ireland.

We caught up with Arnold to talk about the decision to commit his story to paper in a memoir, his hopes for today’s ongoing conversation around mental health and the other writers who have inspired him. You can hear from him again at Emerging Writers I.