I first came across Maria Edgeworth when I married in 1964 and came to live in Co. Westmeath, 15 miles from Edgeworthstown. Pakenhams and Edgeworths had intermarried in the early...

Before the advent of e-mail it seems to have been an irrefutable fact that persons destined by a Higher Authority to become famous would have their letters preserved from a...

Biographers are not universally loved. James Joyce called us ‘biografiends’ and Edmund de Waal, although acclaimed for his family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, a book both tender and...

I started writing A Ton of Malice in 1981 – and finally finished it this year. It’s hard to know why it took so long. It’s a memoir, so the...

Memoir – or life writing – is becoming an increasingly popular genre. Gone are the days when only politicians and sports people wrote about aspects of their lives; now anyone...

Sometimes we write about what we know. And sometimes what we know – and experience – leads us to writing. And sometimes it’s not what you ever expected to write...

We all have dreams, and sometimes these dreams – or ambitions – are the driving force to success.    We’ve all heard the inspirational quotes – “Don’t give up on your...

If Women Rose Rooted wasn’t the book I intended to write. In fact, I never intended to write another book at all. My first novel, The Long Delirious Burning Blue,...

From email to bookshelf, my first book has taken 10 months. The email was from Hachette Books Ireland asking if I was interested in meeting. So I met them, and...

The tradition of setting new goals and resolutions is a ritual and a challenge I look forward to every year. At the beginning of 2013 as I reflected on the...