On Sunday 6 September 2026, I shared the stage at the Eumundi Writers Festival with my son Magnús and with author Simon Cleary and his son Dominic. The festival had invited Simon and me to talk about our 2024 titles, Everything is Water by Simon and Running with Pirates by me, both of which have accounts of travelling with our sons.
The panel traversed quite a few topics, including the nature of the travel projects themselves, as well as our sons' own recollections of them, that is, from their points of view rather than just from the writers' perspectives.
We also broached topics that re-occur frequently in discussions of creative nonfiction, and family memoirs in particular: how and when we might represent the lives and views of those who are close to us; how creative nonfiction interrogates broader social issues inductively, and the role of writing as a form of thinking.
Inevitably, the panel also highlighted the changing nature of father-son relations across generations, especially the nature and extent of the involvement of fathers in parenting and how fathers communicate with their children. As a (live) work of nonfiction, it highlighted the potential for creative writing to speak with as well as about others.
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| From left: Dominic and Simon Clearly, Magnús Gíslason and me (Picture supplied by Simon Cleary) |
