Podcast - Wild Quiet on RTÉ Arena - 31st May 2016

"As a writer, you're often playing a game of 'what if?'" 

I had a great chat with Séan Rocks about my debut collection Wild Quiet. We talked about the inspiration behind some of the stories, the dangers of drawing on real life, and how I used religious iconography to add to the strangeness of the title story. We also chatted about Derry, and Séan asked about some of the autobiographical elements in 'Ebenezer's Memories.'

My Mental Knuckle-fight with Irishness

"Looking back, I see our house as an Irish space station which had drifted off orbit." 

I've been overwhelmed by the response to my article in the Irish Times this week. This morning I woke up to emails from New Zealand, Italy and the USA, from people sharing their experiences of growing up Irish abroad, or of growing up in Ireland with parents from elsewhere. I hope this will open up lots of meaningful conversations on Irish identity, and that we can really start to create a more inclusive definition of what it means to be Irish in 2016.