Sue Leonard

Lilian started writing when she was ten years old. “I wrote fan fiction with my best friend. We used to meet up at playgrounds to brainstorm story ideas. I transitioned into writing original fiction in high […]

When John Cole arrives at a former Northern Irish military aerodrome to identify a woman’s body, old secrets start to surface. But what is the connection with Hooper, a black serviceman who hung in World War […]

Paul tried accountancy, but then switched and worked in a bank for a while, before going into the IT industry. “When I was working for Intel, I returned to college, and studied Interior Design. My first […]

Back in August 1882, a gang of men entered a tiny homestead in Maamtrasna, County Galway, and murdered five of the occupants. John Joyce, his wife Bridget, mother Margaret, son Michael and daughter Peggy, who died […]

An English and French teacher, Caragh has written since she was small. She had her first child just after college but went back to do an HDip and has been teaching since. “I sent a manuscript […]

A prolific reader, Jacqueline reviewed books for the, then, Cork Examiner aged 14, winning young writer of the year. After her Masters in Italy she lived in Spain for a year. Then, gaining a Fulbright scholarship, […]

Anne worked in Waterstones for 8 years, as a buyer of non-fiction. “I loved it. I worked in Convent Garden, opened Dublin’s Jervis Street branch, and manged Dawson Street.” Wanting a new challenge, she went back […]

Back in 2000, Billy O’Callaghan visited Coney Island. He was only there for an afternoon – whilst on a two-week whistle-stop tour of Boston and New York – but he loved the island for its relative […]

Lesley Pearce’s life reads like one of her novels. Left motherless at three, she ended up in a Victorian style orphanage, to be rescued, three years later, by a stepmother who was then cold towards her. […]

Sweet Home. By Wendy Erskine. The Stinging Fly.  There’s been some impressive writing to come out of Northern Ireland in recent years, and the latest, a collection of stories published by The Stinging Fly, focuses on […]

Hazel Gaynor has long been fascinated with Grace Darling, the Northumbrian heroine who, in 1828, risked her life to rescue the survivors of a shipwreck. She learned about her in primary school. “Grace’s story had everything,” […]

Notes to Self. Emilie Pine. Tramp Press.   The opening essay in Emilie Pine’s excellent collection, takes us to Corfu, where Emilie and her sister discover the inadequacies of the Greek health system. Their father’s liver, abused […]