Beginner's pluck: Dublin-born writer Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin

An intense child, Niamh always loved writing.
'I scribbled lines before I could write,' she says, 'and at eight, I wrote poems and performed them at my parent's parties, but I lost confidence in my late teens.'
Graduating in 2011, Niamh moved to London and worked for non-profit organisations, with social justice publications, with charities and unions on media relations, doing story telling for social change.
She then studied politics at SOAS before working for a political blog and doing some freelance journalism.
'Then I worked for the Trades Union Congress and then switched to working freelance.'
I like having a mix of different projects.
All this time Niamh had yearned to write fiction, but there was never time.
'You have to make space. The pandemic focused me.
'I started writing the novel in January 2021 and sold it in the summer of 2023.'
Meanwhile, in 2022, she won the PFD Queer Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize Discoveries Award, (for the first 10,000 words of a novel).
Ordinary Saints was selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club.
Who is Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin?
Date/ place of birth: 1989/ Dublin.
Education: Castleknock Community College; Trinity College Dublin, English with Classical Civilisation. SOAS, (School of Oriental and African Studies,) Politics.
Home: Edinburgh, since 2020.
Family: 'I have an incredible group of friends, which includes my sisters, Aoife and Dearbhaile.'
The day job: Freelance in non-profit communications.
In another life: 'I might have gone into the law and become a barrister.'
Favourite writers: Virginia Woolf; Toni Morrison; Dorris Lessing; John MacGahern; Ruth Ozeki; Torrey Peters.
Second book: 'It's in the early stages.'
Top tip: 'I loved the George Saunders quote: 'Focus on the sentence.''
Website: www.niamhnimhaoileoin.com
Instagram: @niamhsquared
The debut
Ordinary Saints
Manilla Press, €15.99
Jay has escaped her devout Irish family and lives in London with her girlfriend.
But when she learns that Ferdia, the brother she adored — a priest who died young after a fatal accident — is being considered as a Catholic Saint, she's forced to confront her childhood and her family.
Will she come to terms with the past?
The verdict: This debut is pretty perfect. It's informative, original, heartfelt, very real, and stunningly written. The characters linger in your mind.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Irish Examiner

11 hours ago

• Irish Examiner

Reasons to be Cheerful: Cork artist Noël O'Callaghan on her new exhibition and musical past

Noël O'Callaghan has always worked across a range of media, in music, theatre and the visual arts. The breadth of her interests is reflected in Reasons to be Cheerful, the title of her solo exhibition of landscape and portrait paintings at the Lavit Gallery in Cork. Reasons to be Cheerful (Part 3) was the title of one of Ian Dury and the Blockheads' best-known singles, which reached No 3 in 1979. 'But I was also thinking of one of my favourite Samuel Beckett plays,' says O'Callaghan. 'In Happy Days, the main character, Winnie, is buried up to her waist in sand at the start, and up to her neck at the end. But she still finds ways to be cheerful, like putting on her lipstick, and singing. It's simultaneously noble and pathetic.' O'Callaghan grew up in an artistic household in Cork city. Her father Diarmuid O'Ceallachain was a professional artist and educator who'd studied under Seán Keating and Maurice MacGonigal at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, while her mother Joan O'Sullivan often modelled for his paintings. 'Even when I was a pre-verbal baby,' she says, 'my mother would be introducing me to my dad's landscapes. She'd have me up on her hip and be pointing things out to me. I learned the world through those paintings, really. Those little marks that represented a tree or something became more real to me than the real world.' One of Noël O'Callaghan's pieces in her Reasons to be Cheerful exhibition. O'Callaghan's father taught painting at the Crawford School of Art and Design from 1940 to 1970, and she won a place to study there herself in the late 1970s. 'I was quite young, so I had a romantic idea of what it might be like,' she says. 'But I found it quite repressive. They kept saying things like, we can fail you. I was rebellious, and I found that being given a piece of paper to say you were an artist grossly offended my sensibilities. All my class had a very hard time. We were the punk generation, and we didn't like this authoritarian attitude. Maybe it's changed now. I would hope so. 'But anyway, I put up some cartoons about the system, and I was given an ultimatum; I could conform or get out. So I left. I went on to UCC and studied English and History. I got interested in drama, and after college, I got a job acting with Graffiti Theatre Company.' O'Callaghan was restless, however, and she soon decamped for West Berlin. 'We were living with a wall around us,' she says. 'It was like an island. But rents were cheap, and there were an awful lot of empty buildings, so it was very easy to get space for band rehearsal rooms and artists' studios.' O'Callaghan flat-shared with a German woman. 'And that's how I learned the language,' she says. 'I was lucky enough to get a job in a theatre company, and I did that for a while. But then, again, I found that a bit restrictive as well. So I worked in pubs and did some English teaching, and focused on playing music.' O'Callaghan and her partner Douglas Henderson started a band called Alice Brennan, in which she sang and played percussion. 'We were a three-piece initially, with another guy named Mathias. We played Turkish-Irish speed folk, and that, for me, was really liberating. We wrote our own songs, and toured all over the place. When the wall came down, we became a nine-piece and toured East Germany.' A self-portrait by Noël O'Callaghan. O'Callaghan returned to Cork when her father fell ill in the early 1990s. He died in 1993, and her mother passed a year later. 'I stayed on in my family home after that, and immersed myself in painting. I did a lot of plein air painting, and life drawings. I had a life drawing group, and I did a a public life drawing event called Live as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1995. 'To this day, I still do a lot of outdoor watercolour sketches, but lately I've been painting landscapes in the studio as well. The paintings I'm making are kind of a distillation of the field work I've done over the years, the actual plein air painting. There would be examples of the plein air painting in the show, but a lot of the more recent landscapes are distillations, I suppose.' O'Callaghan also began making self-portraits. 'The first one I painted was on Christmas Day in 1994. I'd always spent Christmas with my parents, and that was the first Christmas I'd ever in my life spent alone. So I decided to paint a portrait of myself, and I called it The First Noël. And then, after that, I'd paint a self-portrait every Christmas Day, and sometimes I'd paint one on New Year's Day or on my birthday as well. There's a handful of those portraits in the Lavit exhibition.' O'Callaghan returned to Berlin in 2000, where she continued to paint and make music, but she and Henderson have recently settled in West Cork. 'I came back to Ireland, basically, because I wanted to get away from fascist Germany,' she says. 'Germany is re-militarising, and it's scary, you know? I couldn't live there anymore.' The two now perform as the Vangardaí, playing what they describe as 'dystopfolk for the masses.' They have also collaborated on a multi-media project called Feathers for Rosa, a tribute to the Polish-born Marxist revolutionary, Rosa Luxembourg. 'We put that on in the New Theatre in Dublin in March 2024,' says O'Callaghan. 'The piece is about anti-militarism, really, and the futility of war. We're performing it on Skerkin Island on July 20 and at Uillinn for the Skibbereen Arts Festival on August 2.' Painting continues to occupy most of O'Callaghan's time. 'Some of my paintings take 25 years to finish,' she says. 'I can never throw anything away. I took a bunch of half-finished paintings back to Berlin with me in 2000, and then I shipped them back again two years ago. I finished some of them recently, but there's lots more upstairs. I plan to finish them one day.' Noël O'Callaghan, Reasons to be Cheerful runs at the Lavit Gallery, Cork until July 12.

Extra.ie​

a day ago

• Extra.ie​

American TikTok having a cut off 'Irish noses'

Irish social media users are up in arms after a new trend has emerged online where Americans show off their Irish heritage. The trend sees TikTok users take to the app to show off their 'Irish nose.' Yep, you read that right. Obviously, there is no such thing as an 'Irish nose,' with those taking part in the trend facing some backlash. Irish social media users are up in arms after a new trend has emerged online where Americans show off their Irish heritage. Pic: Shutterstock One person shared a glimpse of her nose, revealing 'this is the nose of my mother, her sisters, my grandmother and many more hailed from Kilkenny.' A comment left under the post said: 'I saw this trend and I was like omg do I have an Irish nose bc [because] it's long and pointy, but then everyone under this has completely different noses. And the Irish say there's no such thing as an Irish nose.' The original poster admitted she was 'surprised at how negative some of the comments got.' @maniacmckee Growing up I wanted my sisters nose. It was cute and little and pointed with a little scoop along the bridge. She has our paternal grandmothers nose from the Swedish side of the family. But I'm so happy to have the nose of our mom, her sisters my maternal grandmother and many others that came from the Emerald Isle ☘️ #irishheritage #family ♬ original sound – meadhbhwalshmusic She explained: 'For me, this trend was about how lovely it is to see a certain facial feature be passed down the generations. Not that I am Irish but that I have ancestors from there starting with my maternal great grandmother and perhaps that's where this feature came from. 'Can't please everyone but I was coming from a good place.' @niamhoconnnor Irish nose???? 😭😭😭 ♬ original sound – meadhbhwalshmusic Content creator Niamh O'Connor was amongst those hitting out at the latest trend, writing: 'Dear America: There is no such thing as an Irish nose. You made it up. Love from Ireland.' Niamh's post received more than 40,000 likes from people in agreement with her with many taking to the comments venting their frustrations. One said: 'We only have big Irish heads.' Another added: 'Literally you cannot tell when someone is Irish apart from their accent.' A third added: 'It's the same with 'Irish hair' and 'Irish eyes,' they just love to put Irish onto anything.' Ironically, the song, Will Ye Go Lassie, that is accompanying the trend is more of a Scottish folk song, despite Cork musician Maedhbh Walsh singing her own version.

The Irish Sun

2 days ago

• The Irish Sun

Huge US TV star goes unnoticed running errands in London – would you have recognised her?

ONE of the biggest names in Hollywood almost went unnoticed as she ran errands in London's Trafalgar Square. Vanessa Williams is currently in London starring as the fictional fashion editor Miranda Priestly in the West End production of The Devil Wears Prada. 4 Vanessa Williams was spotted walking around London today Credit: Splash 4 The actress stopped to pose for photos with fans Credit: Splash 4 Vanessa looked stylish in wide-leg trousers and platform heels Credit: Splash The former Miss America, 62, was spotted looking very chic on the warm London day with a thick ponytail and wearing a black t-shirt tucked into wide-leg, white trousers. Vanessa completed the stylish look with black platform heels. She carried a black fringe bag and stopped for selfies for the few fans who recognised her near the famous London landmark. The vanessa williams The musical based on the bestselling novel and blockbuster film, tells the story of an aspiring journalist who lands a job at Runway magazine. Vanessa debuted in the role when the musical opened in London 's West End on October 24, 2024 . The music in the show is composed by none, other than Sir Elton John. However, Vanessa's time in London has not Most read in Showbiz She revealed in January that her mother died in the English capital after making the trip to watch her perform. Vanessa cited a 'major decline in health ' as the cause of her mother's death. Huge US TV star goes unnoticed running errands in London - would you have recognised her Sharing a statement to her Instagram with the sad news, she told fans: "On December 28th, the world lost a powerhouse, dynamo and force of nature packed into a 5ft frame. "Our mom, Helen Williams, aka Gaga to many, took her final bow in London 20 days after celebrating her 85th birthday surrounded by family and friends. "It's impossible to describe all she meant to everyone because each person saw a different facet of her. Loyal friend to many, icy stares to a chosen few." In 2012 Vanessa and her mother co-authored a book together, titled 'You Have No Idea: A Famous Daughter, Her No-nonsense Mother, and How They Survived Pageants, Hollywood , Love, Loss'. 4 Vanessa is currently starring in The Devil Wears Prada musical on London's West End Credit: Getty