angela bourke

No 535 Maeve Brennan Wit, Style and Tragedy: an Irish Writer in New York by Angela Bourke

Maeve Brennan, like her fellow New Yorker writer Mary Lavin, is one of those Irish writers that everyone should have heard of, but whose body of work hasn’t received the attention it deserves. In Wit, Style and Tragedy: an Irish Writer in New York, Angela Bourke aims to redress that balance and to return Maeve…

“Are you a witch or are you a fairy, or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?” No 571 The Cure by Carlo Gébler

COLONEL EVANSON: Why did you place your wife in the fire? CLEARY: I would not have done that. I would sooner put myself in the fire than put my wife in it. Carlo Gebler’s The Cure is based on the true story of Bridget Cleary, an Irish woman who was burned to death by her…

No 632 The Burning of Bridget Cleary by Angela Bourke

When I was 7 years old, I developed ringworm on my face. After several rounds of medicine hadn’t cleared it up, my Mum took me to a local faith healer to try and treat it. This was 1978. As a child growing up in Catholic Ireland, my grandmother still believed in the banshee, my great…