In residence: Patrick McGuinness
Sarah Baur made a wonderful video portrait of our British writer-in-residence Patrick McGuinness. He was a guest at Passa Porta in March and then also stayed at De Letterie in Ostend, the city that plays a major role in the book he is currently working on. On camera, Patrick talks about his Belgian roots, Britain 'post-Brexit', his handling of different literary genres, his admiration for Brussels poet Odilon-Jean Périer and his plans for a novel about Marvin Gaye and other 'exiles and outcasts' who once lived in Belgium.
Patrick McGuinness (1968) is a British novelist, poet and critic with Belgian and Irish roots. Alongside writing, he teaches French and comparative literature at Oxford University. Well-known titles of his include the novels The Last Hundred Days (Seren, 2011) and Throw Me to the Wolves (Cape, 2019); the poetry collections The Canals of Mars (Carcanet, 2004), Jilted City (Carcanet, 2010) and Blood Feather (Cape, 2023), and the essay Other People’s Countries, about his childhood in his mother's Belgian hometown. In 2023, he received de Prix Triennal du Rayonnement des Lettres Belges (prix Léo Beeckman) for his contribution to the study and notoriety of French-language Belgian literature in the English-speaking world.
In 2013, McGuinness was a first-time writer in residence at Passa Porta; one year later he gave a reading on the occasion of Passa Porta’s 10th anniversary. In 2024, the year of our 20th anniversary, he returned to Brussels.
