Ireland's new writing talent: Naoise Dolan and Molly Aitken

Dublin-born Naoise Dolan and fellow Irish author Molly Aitken are among the most hotly tipped début authors for 2020; here they discuss the inspiration behind their first novels.

Naoise Dolan

Tell us about Exciting Times. 

It’s set in expat Hong Kong, and it’s about a love triangle between three characters in their twenties: Ava, the bisexual Irish narrator, who comes to Hong Kong to teach English; Julian, a British male investment banker who shares her dark sense of humour; and Edith, a very earnest Hong Kongese lawyer who thinks there might be more to her than that. I think it’s really about money, language, power, and the age-old dilemma: how do you expect other people to be vulnerable with you if you won’t be vulnerable with them?

Do you think Irish writing is having a moment just now?

New Irish writing is always “having a moment” in Ireland itself; I can’t think of a time when Irish people haven’t wanted to read it. So the real shift is in the level of interest from readers in the UK and further afield—and, as someone who’s spent most of my life in Ireland, I’m not sure why that is!

I suppose it helps that Ireland has a relatively open journal culture, where editors will publish unsolicited work. It’s not perfect, and structural disadvantages still create barriers to entry. But anecdotally, I think most people find it easier to get that first story out in Ireland than in, say, the UK or the US, which fosters a plurality of voices that you might not get if publication is only accessible to people who do [Creative Writing] MFAs.

I also think that the past decade has been a fraught time for British identity (to put it mildly), so maybe there’s an escapism in disappearing into the work of writers whose national self-conception is more stable and, frankly, less rooted in having been a coloniser. But I really don’t know... a British person might be better placed than me to explain why the UK pays more attention to Irish writing at some points than at others.

Do you feel part of any sort of movement?

The Stinging Fly and other journals that support emerging work are brilliant. They give you a confidence boost, and that’s crucial to your development as a writer. To get a novel published, you have to be willing to look and feel very foolish in the short term. You’re throwing yourself into a book no one else believes in yet. Publications like Stinging Fly give new writers permission to take ourselves seriously.

And it’s exciting to see your work in conversation with writers from other countries in the journals that take submissions from everywhere. Often when I read Stinging Fly, I get the “aha” feeling that something is being represented that I’ve never seen in fiction before—because no one who’s experienced it has had the time or space or resources to get a book out yet.

What is your inspiration? 

None of my fiction is autobiographical, but I’m drawn to characters who see things the way I do: mordant sensibilities, salty women who have a riposte to everything and an answer to nothing. And I think growing up queer in an often homophobic Ireland has steered me towards writing about interpersonal power dynamics.

The media outside Ireland (and a lot of straight people in Ireland!) tend to claim we’re past all that now, but that hasn’t been my experience, or that of many LGBT+ Irish people I know. The Dublin I grew up in was one where I often felt I had to be careful, and I think that made me attentive to tiny shifts in relationships, the subtleties of conversations, the small ways your words and gestures might betray you.

At the same time, you get to be part of an amazing community—and for me, because I’m especially lucky, it starts with my gay brother!—and while that’s not directly in the book, because it’s not set in Dublin, I’m aiming to be real about the fact that discrimination happens, but it doesn’t define LGBT+ experiences.

Exciting Times (9781474613446) is due to be published by W&N on 16th April 2020, priced at £14.99. Author Naoise Dolan studied English Literature at Trinity College Dublin and Oxford University.

 

Molly Aitken

Can you tell us about The Island Child?

The Island Child is a loose retelling of the Persephone myth about Oona—a girl growing up on an imagined island off the west coast of Ireland. When she befriends a wild boy and his outsider mother, her family begins to unravel. Years later, in Canada, her daughter vanishes, taking Oona on a journey back through the childhood she tried to forget.

What was the inspiration for the story?

The idea came from a part of the Odyssey where Odysseus, the outsider, washes up on the shores of an island. I think this captured me because as a child my family moved from Kildare to a tiny village in West Cork and we were definitely the outsiders there. I’m very preoccupied with mother-daughter relationships, which is a big theme in The Island Child. I also spent time on islands soaking up the rain and sea spray, so I could really drench myself in the lives of my characters.

Why do you think Irish writing is so hot right now?

I’m not sure Irish writing is having any more of a moment than it already has in the past few years. Although it does seem like Irish women writers, and particularly younger women writers, are getting more attention than we have had in the past. I think publishing has woken up to the fact that there are a lot of readers in their twenties and thirties who want their experiences reflected in fiction.

Can you tell us about your follow-up?

I’m keeping it under wraps at the moment, but I’ll say it’s even more inspired by Greek myth than The Island Child. It’s a contemporary retelling, and about first love. So far it features lots of travel around Europe. I live in the UK now, so you could say it’s my fictional goodbye to the EU.

What inspires you overall?

I often use fairytales and myths as a jumping-off point. Other writers massively inspire me, too. I was reading a lot of Edna O’Brien and Jennifer Johnston while I wrote The Island Child. But sitting at my desk and typing until something halfway decent falls out is the only real way I’ve found to get “inspiration”.

Aitken’s début novel, The Island Child, is due to be published in spring 2020 by Canongate as part of a two-book deal. Aitken was born in Scotland and brought up in Ireland. She studied classics and literature at Galway University and earned an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University.

This was written as part of The Bookseller's focus on publishing in Ireland; for more content from this focus, head here.