[INTERVIEW] Irish author Danielle McLaughlin on exchange with Korean students and compelling visit to Jeju

Irish writer Danielle McLaughlin visited Seoul for the Irish Embassy’s exchange program and led a creative writing workshop at Korea University on Monday. She said the trip felt especially meaningful because she was reading Han Kang’s We Do Not Part, which led her to Jeju Island. McLaughlin described the student workshop as energetic and said literature matters because human connection cannot be replaced by AI.

The Irish Embassy began its exchange program in 2024 with help from Literature Ireland, the state-funded organization promoting Irish writing abroad.

More than 50 Korea University students attended McLaughlin’s two-hour creative writing workshop on Monday.

McLaughlin said she came to fiction in her 40s after practicing law and now teaches creative writing courses and mentors emerging writers.

She won the Windham-Campbell Prize and the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award in 2019.

McLaughlin hopes to write something nonfictional about Jeju someday, though she has not decided on the form yet.

Published Sep 16, 2026 7:00 am KST

Award-winning writer is invited by Irish Embassy in Korea

Irish writer Danielle McLaughlin poses with a Korean translation of her novel "Dinosaurs on Other Planets" during an interview with The Korea Times at Korea University in Seoul, Monday. Korea Times photo by Lee Hae-rin

When Irish writer Danielle McLaughlin received an invitation to visit Korea, she was deep into Nobel laureaute author Han Kang’s “We Do Not Part” (2021), a novel whose reckoning with the Jeju April 3 massacre had unsettled and moved her.

The timing felt like an invitation within an invitation.

“The minute I was invited, I knew I wanted to go,” she said during an interview with The Korea Times after leading a creating writing workshop at Korea University on Monday.

The Cork-based author, known for the award-winning short-story collection “Dinosaurs on Other Planets” (2015) and the novel “The Art of Falling,” (2021) visited Seoul as part of the Irish Embassy’s inititive to bring contemporary Irish writers to Korea.

The embassy began its exchange program in 2024 with the help of Literature Ireland, the country's state-funded organization promoting Irish writing abroad.

At Korea University on Monday, more than 50 students — many encountering McLaughlin’s work for the first time — packed into a classroom for a two-hour creative writing workshop.

The room’s enthusiasm was striking. Some students even sat on desks when seats ran out and others stayed after the program to continue asking questions about writer’s block and the fear of producing imperfect first drafts.

“The students were incredible. There was a lovely energy in the room, and they threw themselves so happily into attempting the exercise and talking about it,” McLaughlin said.

She connected with the students by recounting her own late and unexpected turn to fiction.

“Never think you’re not a writer. I thought writers were like unicorns, born just knowing how to write a story,” she told students. “But we can learn how to write.”

Irish writer Danielle McLaughlin speaks during a creative writing workshop for students organized by the Irish Embassy in Seoul at Korea University in Seoul, Monday. Korea Times photo by Lee Hae-rin

Her advice was practical and reassuring: read widely, write regularly, seek out a writing group and let a first draft be bad.

“Our writing is always really, really, really bad until it isn’t,” she said. “It’s about giving ourselves permission to be really embarrassingly honest in what we put down on the page.”

For McLaughlin, who came to fiction in her 40s after practicing law, the workshop also offered a familiar form of exchange. She also teaches creative writing courses and mentors emerging writers back home, dividing her time between writing and teaching.

“I learn so much from students,” she said. “Sometimes, if I find or help find an answer for a student … in a couple of months’ time I could be stuck on the very same problem in my own work.”

She described Ireland’s literary ecosystem supportive and vibrant, with public funding for mentorship programs, grants for writers seeking workshops or mentors, a busy circuit of literary festivals and a dense network of magazines open to emerging writers.

McLaughlin herself found an early route into publishing through The Stinging Fly, the influential Irish literary magazine that later published “Dinosaurs on Other Planets.” The book helped establish her internationally; in 2019, she received the Windham-Campbell Prize and the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award.

Despite an already packed week of Seoul engagements, McLaughlin carved out a single day for visiting Jeju Island. Han’s “We Do Not Part” stirred her curiosity about the island’s history and made the visit feel essential.

“I didn’t know about those massacres until I read the book,” she said. “I thought she conveyed everything so powerfully and managed to do it in a way that didn’t brutalize the reader. She holds the reader within this liminal or protected space where the reader is being told the story of such terrible atrocities.”

Flying early to the southern island and returning to Seoul late, she visited places where villages once stood but had been erased, an experience she described as “going to look at something that had been taken away.”

At a beach associated with the novel’s account of a massacre, she saw children playing under bright sunshine, a contrast that made the coexistence of historical trauma and everyday life feel immediate. “That movement between past and present — and how we do not part, as the book says — and the layer of history was with me when I was on the beach this beautiful sunny day,” she said.

She hopes to write something nonfictional about Jeju someday, though she does not yet know its form. For now, she plans to return to Han’s novel.

For McLaughlin, Han’s ability to carry readers through painful history without turning away from its weight speaks to the ethics she brings to her own writing. Even when a story moves through bleak territory, she said, she looks for room for humor, beauty and hope.

“I hope that I never brutalize a reader or leave them in despair,” she said. “I want them to go forward thinking that the world is still worth going forward with, even if it’s been a pretty difficult place in the novel or in the story.”

In an era when generative AI can produce polished text in seconds, McLaughlin said literature’s enduring value lies in the human connection.

“AI is never going to be able to achieve the same connection that a human can achieve,” she said. If more people approached the world with patience and inward attention that literature requires, “there would be higher levels of empathy and there would be less disagreement and less war,” she said.

爱尔兰作家丹妮尔·麦克劳克林（Danielle McLaughlin）应爱尔兰大使馆交流项目访问首尔，并于周一在韩国大学举办了一场创意写作工作坊。她表示，此次行程意义非凡，因为她当时正在阅读韩江的小说《我们永不分离》（We Do Not Part），这本书促使她前往济州岛。麦克劳克林形容学生们的工作坊充满活力，并指出文学之所以重要，是因为人与人之间的联结是人工智能无法取代的。

爱尔兰大使馆于 2024 年在爱尔兰文学协会（一个由国家资助、致力于在海外推广爱尔兰文学的组织）的帮助下启动了交流项目。

周一，超过 50 名韩国大学学生参加了麦克劳克林举办的为期两小时的创意写作工作坊。

麦克劳克林说，她在 40 多岁时放弃了律师工作，开始创作小说，现在她教授创意写作课程，并指导新晋作家。

2019 年，她获得了温德姆-坎贝尔奖和《星期日泰晤士报》有声短篇小说奖。

麦克劳克林希望有朝一日能写一些关于济州岛的非虚构作品，但她还没有决定采用什么形式。

发布于2026年9月16日 上午7:00（韩国标准时间）

获奖作家受邀访问韩国爱尔兰大使馆

周一，爱尔兰作家丹妮尔·麦克劳克林在首尔高丽大学接受《韩国时报》采访时，手持其小说《其他星球上的恐龙》的韩文译本。照片由《韩国时报》李海琳拍摄。

当爱尔兰作家丹妮尔·麦克劳克林收到访问韩国的邀请时，她正在阅读诺贝尔文学奖得主韩江的小说《我们永不分离》（2021），这部小说对济州岛四三日大屠杀的反思令她感到不安和感动。

时机把握得恰到好处，就像是邀请函中的邀请。

“我一接到邀请，就知道我想去，”她在周一于韩国大学主持完一个写作工作坊后接受《韩国时报》采访时说道。

这位居住在科克的作家，以获奖短篇小说集《其他星球上的恐龙》（2015 年）和小说《坠落的艺术》（2021 年）而闻名，此次访问首尔是爱尔兰大使馆将当代爱尔兰作家带到韩国的倡议的一部分。

在爱尔兰文学协会（该国政府资助的、旨在向海外推广爱尔兰文学的组织）的帮助下，大使馆于 2024 年启动了交流项目。

周一，在韩国大学，50 多名学生——其中许多人是第一次接触麦克劳克林的作品——挤进一间教室，参加了一个为期两小时的创意写作工作坊。

房间里的气氛十分热烈。有些学生甚至在座位不够时坐在桌子上，还有一些学生在课程结束后留下来继续提问，内容涉及写作瓶颈和害怕写出不完美的初稿。

“学生们太棒了。教室里气氛很好，他们兴高采烈地投入到练习中，并积极讨论练习结果，”麦克劳克林说。

她通过讲述自己后来出人意料地转向小说创作的经历，与学生们建立了联系。

“永远不要觉得自己不是作家。我以前以为作家就像独角兽一样，天生就会写故事，”她对学生们说。“但我们是可以学习写作的。”

周一，爱尔兰作家丹妮尔·麦克劳克林在首尔高丽大学出席由爱尔兰驻首尔大使馆组织的面向学生的创意写作工作坊并发表演讲。（韩国时报 李海琳 摄）

她的建议既实用又令人安心：广泛阅读，定期写作，加入写作小组，不要在意初稿是否写得不好。

“我们的写作一开始总是很糟糕，直到后来才变得好起来，”她说。“关键在于我们要允许自己坦诚到令人尴尬的地把想法写在纸上。”

对于麦克劳克林来说，这个写作工作坊也提供了一种熟悉的交流方式。她在四十多岁时放弃了律师工作，转而从事小说创作。她还在家乡教授创意写作课程，指导新晋作家，将时间分配在写作和教学之间。

“我从学生身上学到了很多东西，”她说。“有时候，如果我帮学生找到或找到答案……几个月后，我自己的工作中可能也会遇到同样的问题。”

她形容爱尔兰的文学生态系统充满支持和活力，有公共资金支持指导计划，有资助作家参加研讨会或寻求导师，文学节活动丰富多彩，还有密集的杂志网络向新兴作家开放。

麦克劳克林本人很早就通过颇具影响力的爱尔兰文学杂志《刺蝇》（The Stinging Fly）进入出版界，该杂志后来发表了她的作品《其他星球上的恐龙》（Dinosaurs on Other Planets）。这本书帮助她在国际上确立了地位；2019年，她获得了温德姆-坎贝尔奖和《星期日泰晤士报》有声短篇小说奖。

尽管在首尔的行程已经安排得满满当当，麦克劳克林还是抽出一天时间游览了济州岛。韩的歌曲《我们永不分离》激发了她对济州岛历史的好奇心，让她觉得这次旅行意义非凡。

“在读这本书之前，我对那些大屠杀一无所知，”她说。“我觉得她把一切都表达得非常有力，而且方式又不会让读者感到痛苦。她把读者置于一个介于两者之间或受到保护的空间里，让读者在这样的环境中聆听这些可怕的暴行。”

她清晨飞往南部岛屿，傍晚返回首尔，探访了曾经有村庄但已被抹去的地方，她将这段经历描述为“去看一些被夺走的东西”。

在小说中描绘的那场大屠杀发生的海滩上，她看到孩子们在明媚的阳光下玩耍，这种对比让她真切地感受到历史创伤与日常生活的交融。“过去与现在之间的这种转换——正如书中所说，我们其实从未分离——以及历史的层层叠叠，在我身处这阳光明媚的海滩时，一直萦绕着我，”她说。

她希望有朝一日能写一部关于济州岛的非虚构作品，但目前还没有确定写作形式。现在，她打算继续研读韩的小说。

在麦克劳克林看来，韩能够带领读者穿越痛苦的历史而不回避其沉重之处，这体现了她写作中秉持的伦理观。她说，即使故事走向阴郁，她也会努力寻找幽默、美好和希望的元素。

“我希望我的作品永远不会让读者感到痛苦或绝望，”她说。“我希望他们读完后仍然觉得这个世界值得我们继续生活下去，即使在小说或故事中，这个世界相当艰难。”

在人工智能生成技术可以在几秒钟内生成精良文本的时代，麦克劳克林表示，文学的持久价值在于人与人之间的联系。

“人工智能永远无法建立起人类所能建立的那种联系，”她说。如果更多人能像阅读文学作品那样，以耐心和内省的眼光看待世界，“就会有更多的同理心，分歧和战争也会减少，”她说道。