Exploring Resilience

How do we go on when the worst has happened? Claire Gleeson’s Show Me Where It Hurts (Hodder and Stoughton) and June O’Sullivan’s The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife (Poolbeg) are two beautifully written and deeply affecting debuts exploring loss, grief, motherhood, and the power of the human spirit to survive. Join the authors in conversation with arts journalist Sophie Grenham.

This event takes place in the Creativity Hub by the main reception of IMMA.

Claire Gleeson is from Dublin, where she lives with her young family and works as a GP. Her short stories have been short- and long-listed for numerous prizes. In 2021 she was awarded a Words Ireland literary mentorship while she worked on the first draft of Show Me Where It Hurts, which went on to be a runner-up at the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2023.

June O’Sullivan lives on an island in Co. Kerry, Ireland. She writes historical fiction, flash fiction and short stories. Her writing has appeared in the Leicester Writes Short Story Anthology 2022, The Ogham Stone Journal, The York Literary Review, Seaside Gothic, The Storms Journal, The Waxed Lemon, Sonder and online as part of the National Flash Flood Day. She is a graduate of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. Her bestselling debut novel The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife is published by Poolbeg.

Sophie Grenham is a freelance arts journalist from Dublin who spent her formative years in Hong Kong. She has written for a variety of publications including the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, IMAGE and Social and Personal, and currently contributes to the Sunday Times Ireland and the Sunday Independent. Her short story, “14”, was published in the inaugural issue of Tír na nÓg magazine.