Sue Leonard

WHEN Alison Walsh’s elder son saw the cover of her debut novel, he was a little alarmed. Underneath the title, All That I Leave Behind, was the sentence, What makes a mother abandon her children?’ Looking […]

Pond. Claire-Louise Bennett, The Stinging Fly. It’s extremely hard to describe Claire-Louise’s debut. Even the author, who comes from England but lives in Galway, isn’t too sure whether Pond is a collection of short stories, a […]

The Canadian novelist Jane Urquhart has spent so much time in Ireland, particularly Kerry, that she has based her latest book — The Night Stages — here. She spoke to Sue Leonard about her more than […]

Weightless. Sarah Bannan. Bloomsbury. It’s the summer in a High School in small town Alabama, and a group of girls watch as the cheerleaders perform their practised routines. Wondering at their sheer perfection, their air of […]

John Murray, €17.99; Kindle, €12.51 JOSEPH O’Connor called The Glorious Heresies, Lisa McInerney’s debut novel, a punchy, edgy, sexy fizzing feast; Kevin Barry called its author “totally and unmistakably the real deal,” and Colin Barrett, Donal […]

High court reporter Ann O’Loughlin sees us at our most distressed moments and is particularly passionate about the plight of children put up for forced adoption, a thread in her first novel. She explains all to […]

ELEVEN years ago, Doreen Finn was considering studying for a PhD. She had completed a Masters, spending a year writing about poverty and disadvantage in education, and had done well, but her thesis supervisor has some […]

The American writer Liza Klaussmann has long been fascinated by literature of the 1920’s. She loved the stories around this time, about the excessive parties on the French Riviera. And at college, at the University of […]

‘I’m terrified I’ll run out of time’ ONE afternoon in 2011, Christine Dwyer Hickey looked out of her bedroom window and noticed that the neighbours opposite were moving house. All this 1970s-style furniture was being brought […]

Mollie Cinnamon is Not a Cupcake (The Songbird Café Girls 1)  Walker Books, €6.38; Kindle, €7.86  A FEW years ago, the writer Sarah Webb was staying in a yurt on Cape Clear Island, off the west […]

HENRIETTA has always adored reading. It’s something that has informed her life, but eight years ago, she was in danger of losing that love. The reason? She wanted to write, but hadn’t the time or the […]

Polly Samson has an extraordinary family history. Her mother, Esther Cheo Ying,  spent time in Barnardos, before becoming a major in Mao’s army. Later, working in China as an interpreter, she met and married a reporter […]