Jan Carson

speaker

829 appearances 3 recordings 3 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 14 May

Jan Carson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 2.

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Brendan O'Connor · Jan Carson - “Maybe the whole of Northern Ireland should have gone to therapy” · 18 Apr 2026 podcast

And on the other hand, I was getting such a warm welcome from the Irish writing community and that openness, that gorgeous openness where people wanted to learn about my culture.

In 2019, my novel, The Firestarters, which is about young loyalist men, was nominated by Ireland as the book to represent them in the EU Prize.

And the graciousness of that and the open mindedness of it, I just find that it was something in that that was really appealing to me.

Do you know what, I think it's a complex journey.

There's a curiosity definitely from the nationalist community.

I think there's oftentimes a defensiveness from the unionist community.

But I will say in their defence that in literature and TV and film, that community is often pastiched.

And it's not a nuanced kind of portrayal of them.

So I understand where that defensiveness comes from.

And it's been wonderful to see some of them taking a punt and reading things and coming back and being able to laugh at themselves in the way.

It's been lovely to watch the nationalist community laugh at their portrayal in Derry Girls.

I loved us to get to a point where we go, we are a bit odd.

We do do weird things too.

Yeah, so the archipelago or the Neagh arch, I call it, because there's always biblical overtones.

It's in two sides.

There's a side that has islands populated by humans.

So there we have Big Flat, which is when the troubles begins, a group of people seek sanctuary out there.

So it's a community of folks who felt persecuted in what they call mainland Northern Ireland.

And we also have the Connolly family, who are the family of the anthropologist who comes out to study this community.

And then post-98, the emphasis really becomes on what's called the far side of the arc.

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