Mary O’Donnell: ‘I’d happily sign off on a 10% Leaving Cert bonus for English, music and art’
A desire to ‘rip into a subject that has sat like a succubus on me’ inspired writer’s first novel since 2014
Women’s writing
Author Emma Donoghue: ‘I grew up very normal, yet had this secret side that I thought everyone would consider foul’
The writer on literary reputation, emigration and ‘the crushing weight of being the only gay in the village’
Tayari Jones: ‘I used to be very suspicious of writers who said the story chose them’
The award-winning US author ‘refused to write historically’, but Kin, her new novel, is set in the 1960s. She explains why
Author Mary Costello: ‘Gaza has disabled me. I think, how could I go into a room and make up stories?’
As her latest novel is published, the acclaimed Irish author has turned her attention to non-fiction, still writing ‘what obsesses, consumes and distresses’ her
Author Henrietta McKervey: ‘I do like a good murder’
Author’s new novel, The Woman in the Water, is inspired by Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca
Colm Tóibín on the writer Mary Lavin: She removed the props by which we might read her women easily
The great short-story writer’s female protagonists often do the opposite of what they intend. Being unmoored by loss affects their every thought
Solvej Balle: ‘I thought that if I started to write this, I would spoil it’
Solvej Balle’s near-40-year project, On the Calculation of Volume, seems both outside time and yet immediately relevant
For Irish women writers, James Joyce was never a shadow but a light
Many Irish women writers have engaged with Joyce - both challenging and building on his legacy in their fiction. In studying them, I was also studying myself
The Wardrobe Department by Elaine Garvey: Evocation of youthful self-discovery is well wrought and truthful
Jumping between London and Ireland, it can feel like two distinct works, about two distinct women
A breakthrough era for women’s writing, from Edna O’Brien’s risks to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter debut
In the penultimate instalment of her series on women’s writing, Paula McGrath focuses on the second half of the 1990s
Irish women ghost writers: Rediscovering lost voices
Jen Herron discovered Irish women ghost writers in anthologies, then another in her own attic
Six overlooked women writers to discover on International Women’s Day
From a former hunger striker immersed in the supernatural, to a writer more censored than John McGahern, Sinéad Gleeson selects six women writers who shouldn’t be forgotten any longer
Irish writers Anne Enright, Claire Kilroy and Megan Nolan named on Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist
Anne Enright, Claire Kilroy and Megan Nolan in running for £30,000 fiction award
In the 1980s I loved many men. I’d completely overlooked the women
Our series celebrating 50 years of women’s writing surveys the fiction, poetry and nonfiction of the early 1980s
Crosswords & Puzzles
Crosswords & puzzles to keep you challenged and entertained
Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
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