jennifer johnston

No 522 Truth or Fiction by Jennifer Johnston (Book 6 of #20booksofsummer)

Truth or Fiction by Jennifer Johnston continues my Northern Exposure series which highlight literature from Northern Ireland and is also, helpfully, one of my 20 Books of Summer! Jennifer Johnston’s fiction regularly deals with themes of memory, loss and an inability to come to terms with the past and Truth or Fiction is no different.…

Reading Ireland Week Two Round up!

Bookish and Not So Bookish Thoughts!

I may be a day late, but I thought I would ease back in to the blog after a month off with a Bookish and Not so Bookish Thoughts post. Bookish and Not So Bookish thoughts is hosted by Christine at Bookishly Boisterous Last weekend was the inaugural Northern Ireland International Crime Fiction Festival – Noireland…

The Re-publication of The Female Line

Women’s writing in Ireland and Northern Ireland has been put firmly back on the agenda lately, not least with the publications and success of The Long Gaze Back and The Glass Shore, both edited by the inimitable Sinead Gleeson. These anthologies have won awards, brought new readers to women’s literature and shone a spotlight on…

#WakingtheFeminists – Three plays by Irish Female Playwrights

On Wednesday 28th October 2015, the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theatre, launched its programme to mark the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising. Waking the Nation featured ten plays, a mix of newly commissioned work and well-known theatre classics. However, they failed to notice that out of the ten plays programmed in the 2016 programme,…

No 636 This is Not a Novel by Jennifer Johnston

Reading Ireland Month continues and all this week I will be focusing on women writers from Ireland to maybe introduce you to some you may not have read or known too much about. Like many female writers from Ireland, Jennifer Johnston is not as widely read as she should be as is often underestimated given…

Putting Irish Women Writers back in the picture

Growing up in Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s, anyone interested in reading would be familiar with the Irish Writers poster. My Dad had the poster framed in his study and I had one on my bedroom wall, along with a set of Irish writers coasters. For several years I even had an Irish Writers…