I got lots of reading in during maternity leave, thanks to a lot of night feeds and discovering how useful a backlit iPad is as a Kindle! And I'm looking forward to meeting some authors (and you, I hope!) at exciting events over the next few months. Next month I'm at the West Cork Literary Festival [...]
There’s a woman I see around Cork regularly and I’m a tiny bit in love with her. Back straight, head high, she is always dressed smartly in a sort of continental way. You know the kind of outfit I mean. Crisp things in monochrome that make Irish women (me, anyway) look like wrinkly spuds. Comfortable but [...]
Love your body. We’ve heard it all before, and to most of us, raised on a diet of, well, diets, skinny celebrities and wonder cures, it’s in one ear and out the other. But body image is a fundamental part of who we are, and it affects everything from our relationships to our careers, no matter [...]
I'm very excited to share the news that I will be interviewing Mary Robinson at the West Cork Literary Festival in July. The former President has written a book, Climate Justice, on the fight for climate justice by grassroots women around the world. It ties in very well with her podcast with Cobh comedian Maeve Higgins, [...]
My childhood memories are filled with holy statues, the smell of incense, the sound of pews squeaking on a tiled floor in an echoey church. Visits to the crib and offkey hymns were Christmas. The somewhat gory sight of the Virgin Mary’s foot crushing a snake fascinated me during primary school assemblies, and the comforting Sunday [...]
Are you feeling a bit wrecked? Sleeping badly? Suffering from poor digestion? These symptoms and others are now recognised by the WHO as signs of burnout. Burnout, I hear you scoff! I’m not some 80s Wall Street trader, up all night snorting cocaine and roaring at people on the trading floor all day! Or a life [...]
We live in an age of unprecedented equality between parents, but, almost three years in, I can confirm that it’s news to many people that men can be parents too. Many of my female friends out-earn their husbands and partners. Sometimes, the early rationale for their career decisions included an expectation that the man would take [...]
Ireland is not usually at the top of the league tables when it comes to environmentalism. In fact, we are regularly close to the bottom among our peers. We miss emissions targets, recycling targets, come close to the bottom in the biodiversity stakes and our dedication to cars and cows means we are not adapting as [...]
Some people are huggers. Their first instinct in every situation is to fly at someone, arms outstretched, squealing at them. I’m not one of them. There are exceptions to every rule, of course. I’ll happily hug someone I’m close to or someone who’s visibly upset and makes it clear they’d benefit from a hug. Hugs are [...]
We’re living in the age of augmentation, when lips, teeth, and breasts are only the tip of the ‘fake it til you make it’ iceberg. These days reality is augmented in every Instagram picture; perfection is entirely achievable with enough patience to capture the right moment, plus the right filters. And it’s turning us all into [...]
