Peter Curran's favourite Northern Irish writer has sold millions of books worldwide, had two screenplays and four television plays filmed and has written successful radio plays. People all around the world read the stories of this former north Belfast lab technician who has the gift of being able to find and amplify the heartbeat of small town life.

His characters are the unfulfilled, broken dreamers searching for some personal redemption from the life they've been given.

This Belfast man, Bernard MacLaverty, is up there with the greats like Raymond Carver and John Steinbeck.

MacLaverty uses words with beautiful precision and his understated style has made him accessible to readers from Nairobi to Norway - as well as Northern Ireland. Many of us first recognised ourselves in literature for the first time when reading MacLaverty's work.

He's reached an even wider audience with successful television and film adaptations, which have lifted his work off the page without losing his strong sense of naturalism.