Deirdre Brennan – författare

A new poetry collection, at the age of 88, by a writer who first became interested in writing in the 1940s and 1950s when she met famous Irish writers Peig Sayers and Blanaid Salkeld. Over the subsequent 70 years she has fine tuned her feminist inclinations into a celebration of women who changed the world, such as Enheduanna, the first named poet in the world who laid claim to her work, the witches of Ghana, and the Cambridge women astronomers who were known as the Harvard computers.

Stories from Belfast to Kerry, from the immigrant experience to the weight of tradition, these voices refuse easy comfort. They explore the raw territories of motherhood and loss, desire and betrayal and the clash between old certainties and new realities. A tattooist claims his lover's skin. A widow faces an impossible choice about her disabled son. Birds of prey stalk through dreams of environmental catastrophe. Here is family in all its beautiful,terrible complexity - the bonds that sustain us, the ones that suffocate, the love that heals and the secrets that destroy.Bold, unflinching, and impossible to ignore, this collection showcases the depth and power of contemporary Irish women's writing.Featuring stories from Eithne Ni Ghallchobhair, Deirdre Brennan, Roise Ni Bhaoill, Biddy Jenkinson, Katherine Duffy and Realtan Ni Leannain, Michelle Nic Phaidin, Majella Ni Dhomhnaill.