‘You should publish a selection of your columns,’ said my partner, sounding a bit less irritated than usual. ‘My Collected Works, you mean,’ I said, with brief grandiose visions of...

Irish PEN Award recipient, Man Booker prize winner Anne Enright launched the PEN International Women’s Manifesto in Ireland for Irish PEN on Sunday 18th November, to a packed house at...

A few years back, my father emailed me a black-and white photograph of Main Street in Brookeborough, his home village in Co. Fermanagh. I used to spend my Easter holidays...

Becoming a Mother – Reflections on Adoptive Parenthood took five years to write but realistically I have been mentally working on it since adopting my first child in 1999. The...

As our wedding day draws nearer, it may come as no surprise that “commitment” is on my mind. But the truth is, it had emerged as an important theme in...

After ten years compiling posts about Tom Crean to the supporters of the Facebook page and group that I created, writing this book was a natural progression for me. From a young age I’ve...

I didn’t plan to write this book. I’d begun work on a new novel about a family wedding in Italy but I couldn’t concentrate; I was too overwhelmed by what...

If there is a single thing Joyce teaches us it is patience. I expressed as much to the grandson of one of Joyce’s sisters when I met him for coffee...

Positive thinking is a flimsy strategy. “You can do anything if you try” is a lie, a myth we must bust if we are genuinely to control our lives. Focusing...

In 2012 I was working for the publisher Phaidon Press, when I watched a video interview with the artist Agnes Martin, whose work Untitled #7 (1980) is in the collection of...