1. Why do you write novels?

I write novels because I love watching people interact, and then I am compelled to recreate some tension in a scene, or some missed communication. I think missed communication is the centre of a lot of pain, and I keep wanting to rewrite this. I have an ear for dialogue and auditory interaction, or perhaps it is more like I can’t block it out and it replays over and over. I guess I really like the musicality of chat. I also write fiction to try to decant the world into something neat-but that rarely works out for me. I like to control the narrative too, you don’t get to do that often in life, so it’s reassuring to me that I can create these sets, these spaces and then send my characters into them. Of course, that rarely happens (that I control anything) as my characters come to life, and often put me in my place. I love the tension of writing; it makes me calmer than anything else I do. (Until publication date). I grew up in an out-of-control-environment, and so writing frees me from my constant feeling that the world is spinning mad. I get a different perspective on people when I write characters. For a few years, I oversee a tiny, fictional corner of my own world. Makes me sound very dictatorial––I am not at all like this!

2. Who inspired you?

Oh so many: John McGahern, Rita Ann Higgins, Patrick Kavanagh, Tammy Wynette, James Joyce, Dolly Parton, my local librarian, Maeve Binchy, anyone who spoke truth to power, my grandmothers, Emily Dickinson, Edna O’Brien, Eavan Boland, Shakespeare, my siblings, the song and dance makers, my sons, my free education, Joan Baez, Josh Ritter, Mary Robinson, some teachers, Pat McCabe. This list could go on forever.

3. What’s the essence of your style? The part, if removed, is not your voice anymore?

I write in a fragmented, frenetic voice. I like lists, and I like to vary form. I write like my life depends on it, and if that process, if I can’t always find the right word in that minute, I will write whatever comes into my head, and so I will circle back over that a few times, and try and tease it out, again so much of my work is based in communication. As I do this, a rhythm emerges. I realise that I grew up in a space that had lost it’s Gaeilge (Irish Language) and that my family were almost ‘trying on English,’ so it was a hybrid of the old sayings, a particular cadence to the west of Ireland, and then a very formal English style we were being taught in school (while also being schooled in Gaeilge). I also grew up in a time of strict control, church, parents, there was a fierce moral code, it was a time when my mother’s standing or value in the community was tied in with her children’s moral code. Especially for girls, so saying the wrong thing, being in the wrong place, doing normal teenage stuff, it could get you into trouble. And I was always outspoken, a little wild, and language thrilled me, and what power it had. And so, that’s I suppose the essence of my style, rebellious, and claustrophic. I am not always sure that I am doing myself any favours by my writing style, but it is what it is.

4. What was your dance-around-the-kitchen moment in writing?

When I was signed by my agent, Peter Straus.

5. What do you want to accomplish in your writing career?

I am forever trying to imagine and reimagine the west of Ireland from a woman’s perspective. It has been written about and is now a popular place, but it has an energy and a vibe that I am trying to capture. I would love to needle down constantly into the microcosm of institutions and how people behave in them. I love this type of action, putting people into strict places and seeing how they respond. My first novel was set entirely on a hospital ward, my second in a school. I think the third will be a kitchen, the most political of all spaces in my opinion. Or maybe a university.

6. Can you ever envisage not writing novels - running out of ideas or energy?

I wish I could, but I can’t. I need to write all the time. It’s pathological.

7. What advice would you give to your younger self?

Swim more. Be kinder to yourself.

8. Away from writing, what are your passions, and what do they mean to you?

I love swimming in the sea, hikes, animals, forests, family, eating. I love wine and I really love whiskey, I have developed a thing for Scotch. It means the smell of the bog and sadness often when I open a bottle, and it brings me back to my rural upbringing. Going to the local bog, and saving peat were how I spent a month of the summer, we would burn the turf all winter, and there’s something about Islay Scotch that seems to capture everything about this. And we don’t do it any more, due to how harsh it was on the environment, but we had no idea about Global Warming growing up.

9. How would your best friend describe you?

Loyal, driven, tough, funny, harsh/hard, defensive, egalitarian, impulsive and very opinionated. (With a soft side that no one is allowed to see.)

10. What’s a significant question to ask you, that no other interview has to date, and what’s the answer, only for New2theScene?

You write about class and social strata in your work, why?

Because these are my people and there has not been enough written or discussed about what class means in an agrarian landscape, one not effected by the Industrial Revolution or industrial progress. What that can mean to the culture of a place, how it can affect the whole ambition of a region. I am drawn to the agrarian difficulties in a contemporary west of Ireland. These are the characters I know and grew up with, plumbers, mechanics, cleaners, child-minders, small farmers––some of the cleverest people I know. Of course, they exist in a social hierarchy of the institutions they are all bound too, and I am interested in teasing out the damming affect this can have on a life. This is a universal and translatable condition across the world, people will always find ways to oppress others for their own gain. I like to enter a dialogue where someone breaks that chain, or does something small, yet radical.