I Loved Him From The Day He Died, Michael Harding in conversation with Dr Sarah Moore Fitzgerald Friday, 11th October at 8pm, Nenagh Arts Centre, Tickets €20
To mark his 70th birthday, Michael Harding took a holiday in Spain, walking a short part of the Camino de Santiago in the early summer of 2024. But as he set off on this pilgrimage, Harding wasn’t alone. Accompanying him was his father, who passed away when Michael was just twenty-two. A man who was distant and aloof, but who had a profound effect on the writer’s life.
In his new memoir, Harding travels back in time to the Ireland of his youth, to the Holy Wells and pubs he visited in a search for a sense of connection and he begins to unpack the long ago trauma of losing a father he never really knew. As he walks in the heat of the Spanish sun, with searing honesty and beautifully wrought prose, he examines how the father shapes the son — and how the boy becomes a man in the search for that which makes us whole. And, as Harding arrives back home after his trip, he discovers, finally, how to say goodbye.
Michael Harding is an author and playwright. A recipient of the Stewart Parker Award for theatre and a Hennessy Award for Short Stories, he has written numerous plays for the Abbey Theatre and was writer in association with the National Theatre in 1993. His novels include Bird in the Snow, The Trouble with Sarah Gullion and Priest. He is also the author of several bestselling memoirs including Staring at Lakes (winner of the Bord Gáis Energy Book of the Year award) He is a member of Aosdána, and a columnist for over fifteen years with The Irish Times.
Harding will be in conversation with writer and academic, Dr Sarah Moore Fitzgerald.