Dbc pierre biography

D.B.C. Pierre

I first contacted D.B.C Pierre in 2005 while organising speakers for The Shirley Society. My list of contactees included the ‘turn up to the opening of an envelope’ celebs to the A-list, who I never expected to reply anyway. D.B.C certainly fell into the latter. Over the following fortnight, emails flooded into my inbox, including “Lord Archer is too busy at the moment but sends his regards”. Spiffing. Amidst all these arrived an email from a recipient simply called ‘Pierre’ (none of your Lords and Ladies here):
“Tess, Thanks for your invitation - I'd be chuffed to come up, though I don't know what I would talk about.”

Here was the Man Booker Prize winner, renowned for his outstanding (and outstandingly shocking) debut novel, Vernon God Little, now writing his eagerly-anticipated second novel, Ludmila’s Broken English, and he didn’t know what he would talk about? Self-effacing? Yes. Self-doubting? Perhaps: “Seriously, I’m sure you’ll think of something… If all goes tits

DBC Pierre was born in 1961 in Reynella, Australia. He spent his childhood in both Mexico and the UK, and now calls Ireland his home. Prior to his career as a novelist, Pierre worked as a designer and an internationally published cartoonist.

Pierre burst onto the literary scene with his debut novel, Vernon God Little, in 2003. The novel, a dark satire set in the aftermath of a Texas high school massacre, was an immediate success and was awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction that same year.

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Hi DBC, welcome to Famous Writing Routines, great to have you here with us today! Vernon God Little was awarded the Man Booker Prize and Whitbread First Novel Award in 2003. Can you describe what inspired you to write this book and what the experience of winning such prestigious awards was like for you?

I was inspired to write Vernon by the extraordinary and tragic modern phenomenon of highschool shootings. How can we normalise an age where

Sue Leonard

The genesis for his book on writing, Release the Bats, came when Pierre’s publisher asked him to write his memoir — a sensible request considering the author’s colourful past. Born in Australia, he spent most of his affluent childhood in The States, and then Mexico. Running wild in his teens, he went through a dark decade when he was essentially wiped out by drugs.

He had reached rock bottom when he was ‘rescued’ by a clinical psychologist whom he sat with for two to three years.

“He was the right human being at the right moment,” says Pierre in his rich baritone.

“He would challenge me and would chat with me, and allow me to make my own discoveries.

He made me think about stuff and that was the end of my desperate career with drugs. “I came out of it with a good idea of how fucked up I was, but also with a license to do better,” he says.

Pierre felt unable to write his memoir because too many other people were involved, and he wasn’t licensed to tell their story. So he suggested to his publisher, that he should write about the period that followed the wildness;

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