A Girl's Writing Is Never Done (c) Shauna Gilligan 2026
There’s always time when breaking a writing practice for browsing, considering, and pottering. This time, Botanic Gardens and Ulster Museum in Belfast. From outside to inside – journeys of family and belonging, to community expressions of oppression in murals, to documenting violence, to stretching back through time to love and betrayal.
Visit:
Writing through grief, disturbances, and uncertainty in a time of war and collective anxiety can be difficult, if not impossible. Jeanette Winterson in the New Yorker (thanks to Jeannine Ouellette for the link on her Substack post) writes that “People are frightened of not producing in this obsessed world of continuous work.”
All this uncertainty in the world – locally and internationally – can push us to give in to this fear, to believe that we are incapable of creating because we do not feel we can produce. Winterson, in the same interview, also points out that:
If you’re doing creative work, you have to move your mind out of its habitual executive function, its administrative mode, and to allow other things to come in, to allow patterns to emerge, to connect things in ways that are simply impossible when we’re just formatting stuff…
When we are in a state of societal and political uncertainty, how do we move our mind out of its habitual executive function when it feels as if it is in a state of high alert? When even executive function can feel strained, and difficult?
Perhaps it is a matter of pausing. Of stepping back a little. Of accepting that so many things are out of our control. Remember what it is to show kindness to ourselves and to others – and especially to strangers. George Saunders has spoken of regretting his “failures of kindness”. In his convocation speech at Syracuse University, he reminded graduates that:
That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality — your soul, if you will — is as bright and shining as any that has ever been…Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.
Maybe instead of trying to create, or worrying that we are not fulfilling one of our roles – for our “produce” to mirror society – despite being too close, or everything feeling too raw – we might just think about that invisible, “secret luminous place” from which – surely?- creativity seeps.
(That is, if we are in a privileged position to have a safe space, and time, in which to do this.) Or we might pause to remind ourselves that amid – and despite – chaos, violence, and selfishness, we do, still, witness acts of kindness and selflessness. These acts of kindness shine and remind us what it is to be human. And to be human, as we all know, is to create.
It’s rare that I get a chance to attend literary events these days so I was really glad that I was able to attend Irish PEN/Pen na hÉireann and Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, in association with Dublin City Council event “Culture in a Time of War”.
Three women spoke – individually then together in conversation – about holding culture, identity, literature and art close and tight, and preserving and rebuilding during a time of war. Tetyana Teren and Olha Mukha spoke of volunteers working hard to rebuild libraries, salvage cultural artefacts and preserve a culture that is under attack.
Poet, essayist, and Professor of Cultural Studies Iryna Starovoyt spoke powerfully of how culture is a sensory system which helps us tell evil from good. Culture in and of itself is all-inclusive. Writers not only mirror and tell stories but they preserve the human face of humanity during a time of war, “living on the edge of pain”. Culture, in short, helps build bridges and brings people together.
It struck me, as these writers spoke, that it is not just a time of war, it is war that was and continues to be waged. This event – and the act of attending events like these – feels part of the preservation and restoration of culture and enacted what Iryna spoke about: it brought people together.
What stays with me is the memory of the empty chair on the Royal Irish Academy stage (you can see the chair in the photograph above, on the right of the stage). This empty chair was in memory of writer and Ukrainian rights activist Victoria Amelina, who had accepted an invitation to speak at this very event but who died from injuries suffered in a Russian missile attack in Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine on 27 June 2023.
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Shauna Gilligan Writer 