12 or 20 (second series) questions with Nuala O'Connor

Nuala O’Connor lives in Co. Galway, Ireland. Her poetry and fiction have been widely published, anthologised, and won many literary awards. Her sixth novel Seaborne, about Irish-born pirate Anne Bonny, is nominated for the Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for Eason Novel of the Year at the 2024 An Post Irish Book Awards. Her novel NORA (New Island), about Nora Barnacle and James Joyce, was a Top 10 historical novel in the New York Times. She won Irish Short Story of the Year at the 2022 An Post Irish Book Awards. Her fifth poetry collection, Menagerie, will be published by Arlen House in spring 2025. www.nualaoconnor.com

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first book (a poetry collection) cemented my commitment to the project of being a writer. I was full of the joys, so hopeful, so (naively) sure of a steady upward trajectory, rather sure I would make an OK living as a writer. I hadn’t a clue what that meant at the time; if I had, I probably would’ve stayed longer in the trad workplace.

My new poetry collection, Menagerie (Arlen House, March 2025), has the same devotion to language, but is perhaps a little freer in spots. It’s hard to be objective about the work. I think I am a better writer since book #1, after twenty-two years of writing/publishing.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I was writing poetry and fiction in tandem – I had enough work for a poetry collection sooner.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I start quickly (I’m impatient) and tend to research as I go, which presents its own issues but works for me. Drafts are like holey cardigans that eventually end up mended, and quite wearable, between the efforts of me, my agent, and the editor I’m working with. Some editors are hands off, some hands on, some are gifted and hands on. It depends how many holes the cardi has, I guess. But first drafts are almost never what is published.

Yes, notes galore, I’m incessant.

4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

It varies. Some things that start tiny – a spark that becomes a poem, flash, story – end up as novels because I can’t stop thinking about the character. In fact, that happens a lot e.g. with my novels Miss Emily, Becoming Belle, and NORA. I have my writerly obsessions – mother-child stories; the body; breaking love – so I tend to write across the genres on those. Others are book-shaped from the start, novels like my WIP, a contemporary novel set between Ireland and Greece.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

They are part of it – we’re expected to do them, and I also have to earn a living. I (almost) always enjoy them in the moment, but being autistic, I live on my nerves, so I’m in a constant state of anxiety, and I tend to dread every social/public encounter. So, the public side is genuinely challenging for me, and I rarely relish doing events, BUT, I also enjoy them, and I like meeting bookish people and talking about literary things. The Dread is one of the central conundrums of my life. 

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

Feminism has always been central to me. Also justice. I grew up working class, so I’m interested in social standing, money, the working vs the middle class and opportunity. But I don’t think in themes or symbols as I begin a project – it’s just about the characters and what they’re dealing with. Obviously, war, the collapsing environment, and capitalism are upfront for all of us, and they leak onto the page.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

The writer just needs to write the human experience in honest, realistic, and imaginative ways. That’s all. Great language and something like a story. We’re all struggling; most of us haven’t a clue what we’re doing here, and we’re basically flawed and bonkers. We need to write that. Writing honestly is political, in and of itself. It’s not the writer’s job to write a palatable version of life with thoroughly decent players – we can pretend those people exist but they don’t. If our work offers comfort, so be it, but each writer’s duty is to themselves – to make the best work with the tools and understanding they have. And not to be a fuckwit.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Both. One always hopes to write a beautiful, breathtaking, meaningful work on the first go. It rarely happens. Criticism is not easy, but fresh eyes are useful. A good editor is a gift to a writer. I’ve had brilliant experiences on some books (my last novel Seaborne, for example) and middling ones on others.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

‘Eyes open. Heart open. Feet on the ground.’ From the wonderful English writer Andrew Miller.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to short stories to the novel)? What do you see as the appeal?

Writing is my safe-space, my joy, my comfort. The difficulty is in brain-space and bandwidth. When I’m working on a novel, I don’t have the time or head-energy for much else. I can break off from the novel to deal with story commissions, for example but, in novel-land, I don’t have the lovely, swirly capaciousness needed for poems and stories to brew naturally. So, I miss the green grass of shorter work while engaged in long form and vice versa, often. Writers are never happy…

The appeal is the different momentum – the comfort blanket of the novel, the long haul of it, versus the electric rush of completing something short.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

As an autistic person, routine is very necessary to me; I have to be at my desk by 9am, five days a week, or I get a bit loopy. I stay there for about three hours, longer when I have a deadline.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Good writing (Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf, often; the classics; good poetry); visual art; any cultural experience – a live poetry reading. Nature walks. The sea. Historical happenings. Inspo is everywhere.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Lavender.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Visual art is the big one for me. I write a good bit of ekphrastic stuff, poems and fiction. I’ve always been an art dabbler – my family is chockers with visual artists – so I make things too. Mostly collages and cards these days. A lot of writers I know draw or sew or knit. Creativity is a nest – for most creatives, we have our main branch, but we like to play with, and weave in, other seductive twigs.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I like work that is tricky, dark-ish, language based, deep, empathic. I like humour. Bowen, Joyce, Anne Enright, the Brontës, Austen, John Banville. Too many to name, really.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Write a novella. A good one.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I wanted to be a bus conductor or a nun, when I was a kid, neither of which would have suited me 😊 Realistically: Archivist/researcher. Conservationist. Architect. Interior designer.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

It’s the perfect occupation for an introverted, shy, non-drinking, autistic loner who loves words, anthropology, and history. Previously I was a translator, librarian, and bookseller, and I worked in a theatre and a writers’ centre. You can see my special interest never really waned: words, words, words.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I loved the Netherlands-set novel Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden: sharp, challenging characters, a house as the main setting (I love buildings), a fold and re-fold structure, strong sentences. Very good.

I don’t watch many films these days, though I recently enjoyed Lonely Planet about a writer in Morocco. I’m more of a series binger. I’ve recently loved Shetland (rugged island landscapes; great characters).

20 - What are you currently working on?

Finishing up my Greek novel. I’m also working out the plan for a memoir about autism, writing, and hope. It can be upsetting to examine past life-blunders, and see where I went wrong, but I’m in my mid fifties now so I care less than I used to about what others think of me. So, onward!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Ian Lockaby, Defensible Space / if a crow

 

if a crow—

then a black ice cube pressed
against the grain of the sun

while the afternoon mugs drop
pattering spoils of  a milk’d black coff-

-in  the over grown carpets
lay  a caffeinated belly bitter against
the sleep against the damn

bright  slipping away.  if a crow—
remembers you,

by what:

Something     growly
in the vanilla leaf—

don’t      dawdle now

it’s plenty late.

I’d been seeing his name around for a while, so I’d been curious about New Orleans-based poet, translator and editor Ian Lockaby’s full-length debut, Defensible Space / if a crow (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2024), a collection unsectioned, as a book-length stretch of clusters of shorter lyrics on and around a landscape of language, fields and shadows within the American Pacific Northwest. “cicadas hum and / mysteriously kill // songbirds—,” he writes, as part of “Songbirds Mysteriously Dying,” “a panic / takes in the internet // birding groups / arguing over whether // to offer the birds water— // throw it in the trees / instead, they say // outside of one’s reason / is another life [.]” I’m intrigued by the spacings and pacings of these poems, how they’re held against and through visual and even physical space on the page, offering moments, fragments, somehow held in air or breath. And through all the smoke, all the branches and trees, the repeated appearance of crows. There’s such a precision to his lyric progressions, casual and easygoing and exact across such wonderful pacing. “you’ve grown and used / different times—,” he writes, as part of the second poem, “A Way to Tell,” “You’ve learned to keep // thyme with each / of them, stacked and riveted / to your ribcage now // And every time you stand, I try to // stay still—to be / located inside of the ways I hear [.]” Or, as the poem “At Trillium Lake” begins:

There is nausea on the shelves
            of A.’s grandmother

the eve of it A traveler
            who hasn’t been here since
she was bedded down
in asylum         for softening

in the violet inconsistencies
            of mind
but who once set out from here—
mornings she’d take on
            mountaintops         alone

Katie Ebbitt, Fecund

 

To start
here is
invisible

changeable
borders

a threshold

the vessel
the stomach

see what you
come out of
came out with

now bloodied
by consummation (“HYSTERICAL PREGNANCY”)

I’d been looking forward to Manhattan poet Katie Ebbitt’s full-length debut for some time, her Fecund (New York NY: Keith LLC, 2024), a collection made up of a pair of long poems—“HYSTERICAL PREGNANCY” (which previously appeared as a chapbook through above/ground press) and “FECUND”—two sequences that showcase her ability to stretch a long thought, a long line. The poem opens, begins and further opens, writing of birthing, absence, physiological change, birth’s paradoxes, female agency and reproductive choice. “I opened / a cabinet / to find / a rotting / bird,” she writes, early on in the opening sequence, “I lied / about / the sympathetic // I couldn’t / take back / time [.]” “Fecund’s thematic resonance grapples with autonomy and positioning itself in space and time,” Ebbitt offers, as part of an interview last fall at Hobart, conducted by Nadia Prupis, “and maybe the fascia of the book is trying to position oneself in time and feeling unable to do so, and how time relates to biology or how biology can steal time away, or gift time.” The two pieces side-by-side exist as a pairing, a duo, almost as counterpoint. “we want / the body / even / if it’s just / dead skin,” she writes, in the third numbered section of the title poem (a poem that works all the way up to forty), “we look at / all the little / fetuses // we say / that having / a child / is to take / your heart out // to put that / heart inside / someone / else’s body [.]” Her poem, her pairing, is set in the body, the heart. With remarkable pacing, steady, slow and unbroken, the poem is set in agency, a long, articulated lyric thread that sits at the heart of that very moment, that choice and that becoming, being. This is a remarkable, and remarkably complex, debut, one that needs to be read repeatedly, and in good time. In the same interview, as Ebbitt continues, further on:

This book began really in response to Brett Kavanaugh being placed onto the Supreme Court. I’ve always been really interested in reproductive rights and access to abortion, and I’m a healthcare worker myself. When this project started, I was in a school-based health center working in their mental health department, but it was predominantly focusing on teen sexual health and access to various resources, and one of those resources was abortion services. And I’ve been following the way in which abortion rights have been stripped away. And with Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, it seemed like this concerted political campaign from the Right was taking hold in a way where there would be the potentiality of Roe V. Wade being reversed. The first poem written for this project, which actually isn’t even included in this book, was this prayer of fecundity I was writing as I was reading the news and feeling really disembodied and fearful.

It’s a strange thing when you are fearing for your body because of an external force. You’re contemplating the possibility of needing care that you will not have the potential to access and ways in which the state strips away such basic autonomy. So the book started thinking about that. At first, it was all kind of prayers directed at potentiality and fecundity and choice, and reflecting on what choice means and kind of the limitations of choice and the things we decide for ourselves versus the things that we don’t.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kathleen Lippa

Kathleen Lippa is a Canadian journalist, born in Toronto and raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Kathleen trained as a professional dancer at The Quinte Ballet School and The School of the Toronto Dance Theatre before embarking on a journalism career.

At Memorial University, from which she graduated with a BA (English) in 1998, she worked on the student newspaper, the muse. Following graduation, she worked at a number of Canadian newspapers including The Express (St. John’s) where she won a Canadian Community Newspaper Association award for arts reporting, The Hanover Post (Ontario), a number of newspapers under the corporate umbrella of the Northern News Services, 24 Hours (Toronto), and the Calgary Sun.

For Northern News Services, after a short stint in Yellowknife, Kathleen served as Bureau Chief in Iqaluit, Nunavut.

Her experience includes writing, editing, page layout and design, and photography. Her Northern experience was in a cross-cultural setting primarily reporting news from Inuit communities.

After spending many years in Iqaluit, Kathleen now lives with her husband in Ottawa and St. John’s.

1 - How did your first book change your life?
Arctic Predator (AP) is my first book, and it changed my life considerably, first and foremost by making me an author - not just a newspaper journalist writing “the Ed Horne story.” The writing was very different than newspaper writing. It took time. There were dozens of very difficult interviews with victims of childhood sexual abuse. I had never taken on such a major story before. And when Ed Horne agreed to be interviewed, I knew my life had really changed. I had never interviewed such a devious criminal before. I had to be stronger. My writing had to be clearer and bolder than it had ever been. And I’ve had to give interviews to journalists - something I’m not used to at all, I’m serious! - about AP. So yes, my world changed with Arctic Predator.
 
2 - How did you come to journalism first, as opposed to, say, fiction or poetry?
I was always much more interested in writing non-fiction as opposed to fiction or poetry. I read widely and secretively as a child, because the books I liked were mostly adult, non-fiction books – the ones I’d get from my family’s bookshelves in my home which were, much to my parent’s credit, at child-eye level, close to the floor. My mom had a particularly good collection of books on the Kennedy presidency, his assassination, and I was absolutely drawn to those at a young age. She also had books like Go Boy! by Roger Caron and books by humourist Erma Bombeck, and the fabulous The Tomb of Tutankhamen by Howard Carter and Arthur Cruttender Mace. I was in heaven with those. As soon as I could start working for a newspaper I did because I wanted to be close to non-fiction stories every day. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love fiction and poetry. I studied great works when I did my English degree at Memorial University. But my heart is in reading and writing non-fiction work.
 
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Normally I write quickly then go back and edit a lot. I am not so afraid to “kill my darlings” or that sort of phrase I hear fiction writers use sometimes. I write in notebooks with a pen. I use yellow legal pads too to get out big ideas and write long passages that may or may not make it into a book. I record many interviews as well, and then painstakingly transcribe them. Then everything goes into WORD on my computer. Shaping and re-writing and editing – that all took years for Arctic Predator. When I was a newspaper journalist I could write stories quickly and I was good at it, I believe. For this book, I had collected information from many different sources over the course of several years. Then I had to hear the story in my head and then write it. The final version of Arctic Predator took four years of solid work before I was ready to send it to a publisher. And I’d first started thinking about the story 20 years ago.
 
4 - Where does a project usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
With Arctic Predator I was working on a book, and only a book, from the beginning. People would say “You should do a podcast! People love True Crime podcasts!” I was like, No. AP is going to come out as a book first. That was my focus.
 
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I’m not sure I enjoy doing readings. But I will do readings if I am asked to. This story, Arctic Predator, is true crime, so it’s not easy to read aloud. It’s emotional. It can be very upsetting for people to hear a reading from this book.
 
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I had one big question that guided me for 20 years : WHAT HAPPENED? In the case of Arctic Predator, it took a long time to answer that question. And it took a long time to answer simple questions, like, WHO HIRED ED HORNE? WHERE DID HE WORK IN THE NORTH, and WHEN? HOW DID HE GET CAUGHT? IS HE STILL ALIVE? These questions are just some examples of simple things that took me years to sort out and get AP to a place where I felt OKAY, I have a book here that is of interest to the Canadian public.
 
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
A writer digs inside of themselves, knows what they can do, has a real feel for that, and then gets it onto the page somehow. That’s my view of a real writer.
 
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I love working with an editor. I guess it would be terrible if your editor didn’t have a feel for you and your work and its value. I had editors on AP that got me: They were very astute, very hard working, and really believed that AP should get out into the world. I am very thankful for them.
 
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Don’t let the bastards get you down! I saw this written across the Whitehorse Star’s building in Whitehorse, Yukon, and thought YES. Thank you!
 
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
The earlier in the morning the better. When I wrote AP I was up at 4 a.m. every morning writing the book until I had the bulk of it done. I left the last chapter until the bitter end and agonized over every word. I mean, I agonize over every word anyways, but for AP the last chapter was tough to write.
 
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I’ll pick up Joan Didion’s The White Album and read some of that. Or George Orwell’s essays. These people just strike a match for me and my writing. Then I’ll do some stretches (I have a yoga mat stretched out on the floor in my home office) and drink some green tea and go back to work.
 
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Lavender and pine.
 
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I agree with McFadden. I also listen to a lot of classical music when I’m deep into writing – Mozart, and big Hollywood movie score-like stuff. And the Icelandic group Sigur Ros.
 
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I’ll get into the authors of a place I’m in – like if I’m in Newfoundland for a longer stretch than usual, I’ll make sure to refresh my knowledge of Newfoundland writers and what’s going on, like – read some Lisa Moore I haven’t read, some more Michael Crummey, some more Wayne Johnston.
 
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Travel to Japan and soak in the hot springs there and explore their amazing cuisine.
 
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I could have been a dance choreographer. That would have been fun I think. But the writing completely took over my life, and I’m fine with that.
 
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Well, the writing always won out because I’d do it whether I was getting paid or not. If you do something no matter what; if you do something all the time that’s actually really hard and painful at times, and no one is watching and patting you on the back, and there is no guarantee of money? You know that’s real. That’s love! That’s what you’re about. Arctic Predator, the book, reveals the real me out in the world, doing my thing.
 
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book I read was Childhood, Youth and Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen. The last great film was Conclave.
 
19 - What are you currently working on?
Writing Arctic Predator was very emotionally draining for me, so I’m taking a break from all writing projects at the moment, and focusing on my health by taking pilates and yoga classes.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;