Writer | Podcasts | Environment
February is not a warming month, and Ireland went ten days this month without sunshine. All the same it’s the beginning of spring. In the lanes I started to see ewes lambing. The pond is filling up with frogspawn. There’s early veg and seeds to plant. I could start to dig again. Anyone following my …
La féile Bríde shona daoibh! (A day late as we're still in post storm signal days and so Happy World Wetlands Day too) I live far more seasonally than a city girl has a right to really, sinking into family in December, and then into rest and contemplation in January. It can easily turn into …
Sinn Féin disappointed many supporters and allies in June of 2024 when they joined the DUP in supporting a British policy to temporarily ban puberty blockers for trans youth. This was a block originally brought in by the Tories, extended by Keir Starmer, when Northern Ireland was something of a loophole for the block in …
Continue reading "How Have Sinn Féin’s LGBT+ Policies Changed So Much in Just Five Years?"
As a kid you fed the crows in the garden behind your parents’ house. You liked that they learned not to be afraid of you over time.
Originally publishing in Catflap magazine (November 2021) There were two reasons I became a champion tree climber as a child. Firstly, because I loved it, the shapes of the branches and glow of the leaves when the light came through, the whisper of the breeze like the promise of something magical about to happen. Secondly, …
For every person I’ve met proclaiming the necessity for real art, I’ve met at least two more people too terrified to share their passion. Asking a young writer, still trying to find their voice in a world of such infinite mass media and “content”, to compare themselves to James Baldwin… That seems unfair. Either shape a generation or shut up? Should we be joking at a time like this?
My problem stems from not knowing how to live long-term. I’ve spent most of my life holding myself together a year, a month, a day at a time, telling myself that if I can just make it to next week, things will get better. I’m hardly alone in that phenomenon, but unfortunately for me I …
Without legally enforceable definitions of terms like “recyclable”, “eco-friendly”, and “biodegradable” we will see a never ending stream of greenwashing advertising selling us the exact same product
Celebrate saving the less charismatic Write odes to plankton, snail and flies, Our love of birds and mammals may be automatic, But we struggle to value lichen in our lives. It's harder to sing of fungi than of tigers, Hard to remember the worm in the earth, Diversity means algae as much as flowers So …
A popular cousin of the “terrible English accent by an American actor in a fantasy movie” is the “this elvish thing is kinda Irish but only whatever I remember about Ireland from that one Wiccan girl I dated in college”. Why does how Irish language and mythology is used in Western Fantasy matter? It is …
Continue reading "Do Fantasy Writers Think Irish is Discount Elvish?"
Orla ní Dhúill 