Mary Burnham

The unknowables of the pandemic arrested my writing for a bit. I was sitting at my desk in 2020, worried about my sick father, unable to cross the country to visit home, and I didn’t have the headspace to write. But, to stay sane and balanced (sane-ish, at least), I have to write. So, I began to dredge up some of the stories swashing in my sea of ideas – possible future projects – and there was Anne Bonny: a young Irish woman, tried for piracy in Jamaica in the 1720s.

I was eight years old, visiting my Dublin cousins. It was always a big thing for myself and my sister to be in the big smoke – all the things you might get up to. Anyway, the craic was that my aunt was going to treat my sister, my cousins, and myself to a day out. That morning, she’d handed us a scrap of paper each, and told us to write down what we’d like to do for the day. After reading through our pieces of paper, she glanced over at me, and I could see she was trying not to laugh.

We are over half way through the Read Irish Women Challenge 2022 and it has been wonderful to behold the enthusiasm and response on social media. Thank you to everyone who has joined the discussion and shared their recommendations and passion for the books they have read and loved by Irish women. This blog hands the recommendation reins over to some of the writers we have been discussing in the #ReadIrishWomenChallenge22.