Irish Writers' Weekend: The World of Maeve Brennan

with Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Darran Anderson, Jessica Traynor, Molly Hennigan and Sinéad Gleeson.

Maeve Brennan (1917 – 1993) is one of the most intriguing figures in Irish letters. Raised in in Dublin, she moved with her family from Dublin to Washington DC in 1934 when her father was appointed as the Irish Free State’s first minister to the US. In 1949 she became a staff writer at The New Yorker, contributing book reviews, articles on fashion, and Talk of the Town social diary pieces under the pseudonym ‘The Long-Winded Lady’. From 1950 she began publishing short stories, many set in Dublin, in the magazine, and eventually published collections in 1969 in 1974. But as the years went on, Maeve suffered declining mental health and she died in obscurity.

This century she has been rediscovered and republished and acclaimed for the sharp elegance and acute urban observation of her writing, and a biography by Angela Bourke, Wit, Style and Tragedy: an Irish Writer in New York was published in 2004. This year, an anthology of essays by ten Irish writers appeared; An Asylum for My Affections: Sketches of Maeve Brennan. For this panel, its editor Molly Hennigan is joined by contributors Darran Anderson, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Jessica Traynor and Sinéad Gleeson to reflect on Brennan's enduring legacy.

Part of the British Library Irish Writers' Weekend 2026.

Her first book The Celestial Realm was published in 2023 and explores the history of psychiatric incarceration in Ireland as it is linked to her own maternal lineage. The Celestial Realm was shortlisted for Newcomer of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards and was also shortlisted for the Royal Irish Academy’s Michel Déon Prize. She was awarded a full PhD scholarship at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Molly is currently working on a novel. She is the editor of the anthology Maeve Brennan which will be published by New Island Books. Molly is the 2025 Arts Council writer-in-residence at the University of Galway.

Her most recent books are Twelve Thousand Days: A Memoir (shortlisted for the Michel Déon Award), Little Red and Other Stories, Selected Stories, Milseog an tSamhraidh and Look! It’s a Woman Writer!. She has been the recipient of many literary awards, including the Irish Pen Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature, the Burns Award for Irish Fiction, Stuart Parker Award for Drama, amongst others. Her novel The Dancers Dancing was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She has lectured in creative writing in UCD, and in autumn 2020 she held the Burns Professorship at Boston College. She is a member of Aosdána is and President of the Folklore of Ireland Society.

Her third collection, Pit Lullabies, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her latest collection, New Arcana was published by Bloodaxe Books and was shortlisted for the 2026 Pigott Prize in Association with Listowel Writers’ Week. Awards include the 2024 Tundish Award from Field Day for contribution to the arts in Ireland and the 2023 Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. She was the 2023 Arts Council Writer in Residence at Galway University and is a Creative Fellow of UCD. She is poetry editor at Banshee Press.

Constellations: Reflections from Lifen won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. It was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Michel Déon Prize and has been translated into several languages. She is the editor of the anthologies The Art of the Glimpse and the award-winning The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers, and The Glass Shore: Short Stories. Sinéad has engaged in multi-disciplinary collaborations with artists and musicians, including commissions from The Wellcome Collection, the RHA Gallery, BBC, Rua Red Gallery and Frieze. In 2002, she edited This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music with Kim Gordon. Her debut novel Hagstone was longlisted for 2025 Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the 2025 John McGahern Book Prize.