I write novels, short stories, literary essays and memoir. My first novel, Another Alice, was nominated for the Irish Times Irish Fiction Prize. Nothing Simple was shortlisted for Irish Novel of the Year at the inaugural Irish Book Awards. In Your Face, a memoir of an experience of mouth cancer was named as a favourite book of 2007 by several commentators. With Dr Denise MacCarthy, I co-edited Word of Mouth: Coping with and Surviving Mouth Head and Neck Cancers in 2015. My most recent novel, Fallen, was the Dublin/Belfast Two Cities One Book festival selection for 2016.
Recent work has been published in The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review of Books, the EFACIS Kaleidoscope project, Yes, We Still Drink Coffee! (published by Front Line Defenders and Fighting Words), The Danger and the Glory: Irish Authors on the Art of Writing, edited by Hedwig Schwall and Look! It’s a Woman Writer! Irish Literary Feminisms 1970-2020, edited by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne.
An experienced creative writing teacher and workshop facilitator, I have held several residencies, most recently at Farmleigh House and at University College Dublin. I do occasional mentoring work for Words Ireland and recently completed a Ph.D in creative writing at the University of Limerick, where I held a Government of Ireland Postgraduate Research Scholarship.
In 2016 I was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Laws by the University of Dublin, Trinity College. A founder member of the Freedom to Write Campaign (Ireland), which amalgamated with Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann in 2020, I am the current chairperson of the Board of Irish PEN.
Libran Writer (Lia Mills) 