Author Q & A

Q. Writers, typically, make less than $11,000 per year. So why bother?

A. I’ve often asked myself that “why bother” question. I think, after all these years, I don’t know how to not write. Plus, if I stopped writing, I think I would become so cranky and unpleasant that many people would cross the street to avoid me. Finally, I have yet to hit that $11,000 mark. But we keep at it.

Q. When did you move from Ireland to the U.S?

A. I was teaching primary (elementary) school in the Irish midlands when I left and moved to upstate New York at the very end of 1986. From 1981 to 1990, an estimated 200,000 people left Ireland.  Many of us left for a better or more merciful job--or any job at all. But others left for what the British author and journalist John Walsh called, "existential reasons." My job was an unhappy one and, back then, Ireland still treated us women as unworthy of making our own career, educational or reproductive health decisions. Frankly, by the time I landed at JFK Airport on a freezing December night, I felt worn out and much older than my real age. So here I am—all these years later.

Q. Do you consider yourself as an Irish author? Or are you a New England author? A Massachusetts author or writer?

A. I’ve never been one for those hyphenated writer labels. Still, if I’m to wear any of them, it would be “immigrant writer.” There's a simple reason for this:  Moving alone across the Atlantic to a new country has largely defined who I’ve become both as a person and as a writer. There’s a conflicted duality about living out your life in a country that’s not your own—and this lends itself to writing.

Q. You also teach writing and speak on the wellness benefits of writing. Why? Isn’t it enough to just write?

A. Well, for starters, I’ve never figured out that “just write” thing. I’ve always had a day job (or two), and it’s this dual life that inspired me to write the instructional book, “Writer with a Day Job (Penguin/Random House).” In one published essay—which I wrote as part of a multi-media art exhibit— I say that “writing has been a rescue mission to save myself.”

So at an early age, if you discover the “trick” of saving your self and your soul, why would you not want to share that with others? I love teaching both creative and expressive (emotional) writing. Years after a class, I bump into a former student and remind them of what they wrote in my workshop. Some are pleased. Others are shocked.

Q. Your own literary tastes and influences?

A. As a rural teenager, I loved reading Walter Macken and John McGahern and Edna O’Brien — not just because you weren’t supposed to (which you weren’t)--but also for these writers’ dexterity with language and story.

I’ve always loved Thomas Hardy--especially his poetry.

Some of our U.S. literary journals showcase the most provocative, well-crafted and lively writing that’s out there. 

I’ve read everything that Booker-prize winner Penelope Lively has ever written. I admire most of Ian McEwan’s writings.  I enjoy the British authors Margaret Drabble, Maggie O'Farrell, Zadie Smith, Tessa Hadley and Rose Tremain. I’m also a fan of the Canadian author Carol Shields and the Indian-born authors Jhumpa Lahiri and the late and wonderful Bharati Mukherjee. Also love the novels of Jamaican-born author Nicole Dennis-Benn.

For non-fiction, I enjoy the works of Karen Armstrong,  Jill Ker Conway, Andrew Solomon and Rebecca Skloot.

Q. What inspired you to write and publish Green Card & Other Essays, Your Most Recent Book?

A. I wrote the title essay (see above) after a trip to my local USCIS processing office in Lawrence, Massachusetts. I went there to renew my then- U.S. Residency or Green Card (which, by the way, isn’t green). The other essays followed, and I was lucky enough to place those stand-alone pieces in various literary and other publications in the U.S. and Ireland.

I wrote and pitched these essays to give voice to the immigrant experience, including my sense of jittery or non-belonging in both our home and adopted countries.

Of course, there is no singular “immigrant experience,” but as a long-tenured immigrant in America, it’s my job to advocate for those who don’t have the legal status (or are too busy working three low-wage jobs) to self-advocate.

Q. Where Does Creative Writing Meet Advocacy?

First, as an Irish woman in America, I am duty-bound to honor my native country’s very long migration history—which pre-dates the 1800’s famine. I must also honor the inter-generational history of immigration within my own family—and our current, incoming families and individuals.

Our current spate of historical revisionism (mostly racially driven) reminds me just why, in 2016, I became a voting U.S. citizen.