Bethany Joy Dawson – författare

When Cora inherits a house in rural County Down from a grandmother she never knew, she steps into a family history shaped by absence, silence, and restraint. Ballybrae House is both shelter and a place of renewal, holding the imprints of those who came before and the hope of something new. Told through the shifting perspectives of three women across generations, Familiar follows Annie as she approaches death and discovers unexpected freedom in letting go; Joyce, her daughter, almost mute with grief, who finds liberation in Cora's arrival; and Cora, who must learn to inhabit a place - and a past - that was deliberately withheld from her, and find the courage to begin again.Familiar is a story about belonging and the uneasy intimacy of family, asking what it means to survive within inherited structures - and how, at moments of rupture, those structures might be remade.