A Girl's Writing Is Never Done (c) Shauna Gilligan 2026
I’m delighted to have a new story – ‘Thirty-Five-A-Night’ – in the Spring 2018 edition of the brilliant Crannóg.
Head over to Crannóg website to order your copy of Crannóg 47, 100 pages packed with fiction and poetry from 42 writers such as myself, Brian Kirk, Richard Halperin, Ciarán O’Rourke, Karla Van Vliet, Lisa C Taylor etc. Also, there’s an author interview with Alan McMonagle. And wonderful cover art: Flight 126 (Stars) by Ruth McHugh.
I’ve been musing yet again about the importance of story telling. Something I did extensively during and after my post as Writer-In-Residence with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre in 2016/7.
Annemarie Ní Churreáin has an excellent article in The Journal where she links the importance of story telling and power and the silence when stories are not allowed to be retold. In particular, she writes about Joanne Hayes and The Kerry Baby Case and reminds us how
It’s a very human thing to seek answers through the making of marks on a page or the creation of a sound.
I would urge you to read Ní Churreáin’s collection Bloodroot (Doire Press, 2017) where you’ll find her powerful poem ‘The Kerry Foot’ at Cahir Saidhbhín which, she says she wrote “with the greatest respect for Joanne Hayes, and out of a sense of personal sadness for us all.”
It is, I now think, the re-telling of stories as much as the stories themselves that stay with us. As Elias Canette says in The Voices of Marrakesh: A Record of a Visit.
The largest crowds are drawn by the storytellers. It is around them that the people throng most densely and stay longest…their words come from farther off and hang longer in the air than those of ordinary people.
Welcome, dear readers, to my new look website and blog! I am delighted to bring you more chats with writers from around the world and news of my writing from 2018 and beyond.
If you were to buy one book this year, why not spend your €20 on Reading The Future edited by Alan Hayes (Arlen House) and published to celebrate 250 years of Hodges Figgis in Ireland. Hodges Figgis is Ireland’s oldest bookshop. 
I am delighted that an extract from my new novel set in Northern Spain in the 1930s “When The October Wind Comes” has been included in the anthology. I am one of 250 writers featured and what a wonderful publication of over 700 pages of writing….
Look out for notices of launches and readings throughout 2018.
Shauna Gilligan Writer 