Evelyn Conlon

‘Evelyn Conlon’s voice is instantly recognisable: wise, funny, insightful (inciteful, if that’s a word) and irrepressible.’ Lia Mills In Reading Rites, Evelyn Conlon brings her characteristic wit and keen intelligence to the task of exploring her writing life, drawing out the events, people, books and concerns that have helped to make her the writer she is. Using the lens of her own life as a starting point, she considers a vast array of subjects, including education; the effects of the Catholic Church, particularly on the lives of women; the legacy of historical moments such as 1916; and, through it all, the power of books to free us, to offer understanding, and to help us to see outside and beyond ourselves. Part memoir, part manifesto, Reading Rites is full of the sharp observation, restless questioning and hard-won wisdom that make Conlon one of Ireland’s finest and most compelling writers. ‘These essays amount to an alternative history of social change in Ireland … each one manages to keep faith with the truth of public speech.’ Sean O’Reilly

This collection of eleven stories by one of Ireland’s best writers is a compelling exploration of what comes from moving about the place. In these stories, Evelyn Conlon vividly imagines her characters all over the world: Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Italy, Monaco, in a house with two drills of vegetables in Skerries. A couple spend their lives wandering around the equator because of a lie they told during anti-apartheid days; one person holds out in a border-straddling tree; a woman from Hiroshima makes the decision to get pregnant; an Irishwoman attempts to assassinate Mussolini, another fights for women's suffrage in Australia. Brilliantly written, witty, and full of the sharp observation for which Conlon is well known, Moving About the Place brings together some of the best of her recent work, along with brand-new stories, including a novella, to show how borders, movement and history change and transform people’s lives. ‘A genuinely exploratory writer … her work is excitingly original.’ The Times ‘Sharp sinuous writing, full of controlled anger and suddenly opened passion.’ The Scotsman

Mapping the changes that have occurred in Irish literature over the past fifty years, this volume includes twenty-one writers, poets, and playwrights from the North and South of Ireland, who tell their own stories. They are funny, tragic, angry, philosophical, but all are vivid personal accounts of their experiences as women writing during a pivotal period in the history of Ireland. With a foreword by Martina Devlin, and an introduction by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, the anthology includes essays by Cherry Smyth, Mary Morrissy, Lia Mills, Moya Cannon, Aine Ní Ghlinn, Catherine Dunne, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Mary O’Donnell, Mary O’Malley, Ruth Carr, Evelyn Conlon, Anne Devlin, Ivy Bannister, Sophia Hillan, Medbh McGuckian, Mary Dorcey, Celia de Fréine, Máiríde Woods, Liz McManus, Mary Rose Callaghan, and Phyl Herbert.