Tell us about your new novel, Eat the Ones You Love
Eat the Ones You Love is a story about two women who work in a flower shop in a fictionalised Dublin shopping centre, and an orchid, who watches them with bad intentions. It’s about hunger, desire and working for minimum wage.
You quit writing after feeling burnt-out and trained as a florist only to be thwarted by the pandemic. How did you return to writing?
I came back gradually. I made and distributed zines during the pandemic – small, low-stakes, handmade booklets that I posted to people all over the world. Their imperfections and ephemeral nature helped me feel playful about the work again. It was a slow recovery, but I think it had to be.
What do flowers mean to you?
I find them so interesting. I trained to be a florist because I wanted to work with people again – and in working with flowers, I learned so much about the delicate and complex nature of dealing in things that have a short, sharp self-life. No matter what is happening in people’s lives, they turn to flowers. Grief, love, birth, heartbreak, apology. Flowers are always there, and therefore, florists are, too.
Baby is a bloodthirsty orchid. Why are monsters a recurring theme in your writing?
Baby is the narrator of the story, who terrorises and stalks the protagonists, but he is by far not the worst of them. I write about monsters because ultimately I am writing about people. The monster is the medium and the message in the work I make. I’m interested in surprises, and in play, and writing monsters that live alongside people is part of that. In my forthcoming work, and my previous work, there are monsters too. They’re subtly interconnected narratively – a kind of pantheon.
Was the horror comedy musical Little Shop of Horrors an influence?
What this book and Little Shop have in common is a talking plant, and a story about desperation for social mobility. And a shop. So the musical is not necessarily the nexus of the work, but it is part of the recipe, for sure. They are cousins, not sisters.
You’ve described science fiction as ‘drag, the costume you put on to tell the truth’
I find that I can speak authentically about my experience in the world when I am using the glitter and costume of speculative fiction, or sci-fi, or horror. It’s like finding a pair of shoes that make you walk taller.
Is it fair to say you have an appalled fascination for the internet and technology?
It is: I love the internet, I grew up there – but that doesn’t mean I’m not critical of it, or deeply aware that it is a kind of dangerous landscape to give your heart over to. I will be trying to figure out what the internet means to me for the rest of my life.
What or who made you a writer?
Reading, and playing video games as a child. I was a kind of an escapist, and writing felt to me like the road out of reality.
Your debut Spare & Found Parts is ‘a love letter to Dublin’. Tell us more.
Spare and Found Parts is set in a Dublin of the near future, just post-apocalypse. The Dublin there is ruined, but still undeniably itself. I wrote it while living abroad, this sort of love song to a home I couldn’t quite get back to.
Other Words for Smoke won the Teen & YA Irish Book Award in 2019. What was it about? The title arose from a Google search!
The most common search term I had during the writing of that work was other words for smoke, because it is a book about a house fire. It is about 2½ generations of women in a house that has a monster living in it – it is also about the legacy of the Magdalene laundries and the shadow they left behind. It is a story about the cost of escape.
You wrote about your emigrant experience in San Francisco for The Irish Times, which resulted in a book of essays, Not Lost
Yes, a long time ago now. It is a snapshot of a single year in my life, told through essays and fragments. Though it is very far from where I am now, I can still recognise what my voice would become, from there.
You write about video games for the Guardian
I do – it is one of the greatest joys of my professional life. I believe video games need good, comprehensive, critical coverage in the press as they make up the largest sector in the entertainment industry, and it is a privilege to get to discuss them. I cover indies, weird games, art games – and I have a great time doing it.
You make zines, more than 60 at the last count. Tell us about them
I made zines at different points in my writing career, but really launched into them during the pandemic. They are simple paper booklets that I mailed out to readers week on week. I wrote pandemic diaries, but I also wrote about silly things, things that interest me, extended jokes. They are intimate, and low-stakes. They are cheap to make, cheap to distribute, and bring people a tactile connection that I think is sorely missing in the age of the internet. They changed my life.
How important are libraries to you, including the National Library, as places to work and learn?
I believe libraries are the most important public buildings we have. They serve a huge purpose to the community at large – a space you can be in, reading, without paying for it. There is almost no other indoor place you can just be in without spending money. They are truly humanitarian spaces. The National Library is my favourite building in the world: I wrote much of my next novel there, under the green dome, in the silence. I think there is something sacred about it. So many people thinking, throughout history and time, all under one roof. It’s hard not to feel the power of it.
Which projects are you working on?
I am currently in edits on my 2026 novel, and finishing a horror screenplay which was funded by Screen Ireland last year. I’m also sneakily finishing another novel, too.
Have you made a literary pilgrimage?
I recently went to see the Log Lady’s Log, from Twin Peaks, in Portland. That felt like a creative summit, for me. A proximity to something very special.
What is the best writing advice you have heard?
Finish the thing. It’s spoken so often by so many other writers, and it helps to be reminded to just finish it.
Who do you admire the most?
I try not to do big admiration or big heroes, but David Lynch was a beacon for me.
You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?
I would invoke free, State-funded childcare for everyone – and, both parents get a full year of paid leave.
Which current book, film and podcast would you recommend?
Book: Sky Daddy by Kate Folk; Film: A Real Pain; Podcast: Maintenance Phase
Which public event affected you most?
Like most others here in Ireland, my eyes are on Gaza every day.
The most remarkable place you have visited?
The Tower of the Sun, in Osaka.
Your most treasured possession?
My great-grandmother’s wedding ring.
What is the most beautiful book that you own?
Leonora Carrington’s book of tarot.
Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Caroline O’Donoghue and Maeve Binchy. The three of us have a lot to talk about.
The best and worst things about where you live?
The best thing is that I live in walking distance of the Botanic Gardens. The worst is that I didn’t move here years ago.
What is your favourite quotation?
‘If your nerve deny you, go above your nerve.’ Our gal Emily Dickinson.
Who is your favourite fictional character?
The entire cast of Succession.
A book to make me laugh?
For me it will always come back to Oh My God, What A Complete Aisling, by Sarah Breen and Emer McLysaght.
A book that might move me to tears?
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin.
Eat the Ones You Love is published by Titan Books
