Stories about the ordinary things that stay with us: a room, a voice, a meal, an object or a place. Written from Kerry, Ireland, but often travelling much further, these are personal essays about memory, belonging, friendship and the lives we make around one another.
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The Photograph in the Envelope
A brown envelope of old photographs opens into stories of family, politics, marriage and loss. Some names are remembered, some are crossed out, and one photograph needs no name at all.
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The Same Words, Differently
A life lived between languages, places and ways of belonging — and a friendship that has found its own translation over the years.
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The Well
The story of the old Intermediate School in Killorglin, the Carnegie, the Well, and Joseph O’Dwyer — the man whose vision for education was never limited by the walls around him.
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Three Coffees, One Village
I thought I was writing about coffee. I ended up writing about seven grocery shops, a railway line, and a teacher who trusted me with her class thirty-five years ago — and her daughter, who just handed me a cup.
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The Stations
A childhood memory of the Stations in rural Ireland, when Mass came into the family home and an ordinary evening became something the whole neighbourhood shared.
