Born in Liverpool in 1976 to Northern Irish parents, Eimear McBride grew up in Ireland before moving to London at 17. She finished her debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, in 2004, but it took nine years for it to be published. It won the 2013 Goldsmiths prize and the 2014 Baileys women’s prize for fiction. Her second novel, The Lesser Bohemians (2016), won the 2017 James Tait Black memorial prize. McBride takes part in Imagining Ireland at the Barbican, London on 30 January.

1. Play
Beginners, Unicorn theatre, London

This was the best piece of theatre I’ve seen in a long time. It’s about a family who go off on a holiday and it’s only over time you realise that the children are actually playing the adults and the adults are the children. One of the parents is terminally ill, and the play opens with this beautiful play the children put on for them, which is just this gorgeous, imaginative feast. There’s a heartbreaking and hilarious moment where you realise that someone who has always been spoken to quite brusquely was in fact the dog.

2. Music
Alasdair Roberts

He is a wonderful Scottish folk musician and he played at the Wanstead Tap in east London, a little venue round the corner from where I live. He writes so beautifully; the music really goes through you. He’s got this very quiet, unassuming charisma – he’s completely magnetic to watch. It was just him and his guitar. It was completely stripped down and the place was packed to the rafters, but you could have heard a pin drop: everyone was completely hypnotised by him. I really love his album A Wonder Working Stone – that’s my favourite.

3. Exhibition
Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, V&A

I loved looking at how she dealt with her body, given that it was such a huge part of her art. It was interesting to see the items she owned: a beautiful prosthetic leg, and an amazing plaster of Paris corset she had to wear after innumerable, horrific and often unsuccessful operations on her back, which she then painted herself – she created art out of her own physical distress. Focusing on women’s clothes and makeup often becomes about objectifying, but she subverted that.

4. Film
Disobedience (Dir Sebastian Lelio, 2018)

This was an interesting portrait of a very particular kind of British Jewish life that isn’t represented very often. I thought the central performances were fantastic: subtle and human and nuanced and complex. It also contains one of the best cinematic sex scenes I’ve seen – erotic but also incredibly intimate, and emotional in that you come out the other end understanding more about those people than you do at the beginning, which should be the point of a scene like that. A really absorbing, thoughtful film.

5. Book
Milkman by Anna Burns

This is an extraordinary book. It’s not set in a specific time and place, but it’s generally assumed to be Belfast in the 1970s, and it’s about a young woman whose path crosses with a man she’s afraid of. There’s been a lot of mumbling about it being very difficult, and I don’t understand why that is. It’s not a book you can skim, but it has a real Northern Irish sense of humour threading through it, which I absolutely love – I found it unputdownable.

6. Cafe
The Wild Goose Bakery, London

This is in a railway arch in Forest Gate. It’s a tiny offshoot of their bakery in Leytonstone. They’ve just opened a little place beside it where you can come in and get a cup of coffee and a slice of cake to stave off the mid-afternoon slump. The interior is no frills – just some mismatched tables and a glass with spoons in it – but they do really nice coffee, quiche, and good chocolate brownies, I have to say. I totally recommend it.