Women Who Write: Women Writing Their Lives

Journalist and author Aoife Barry will moderate a conversation with novelists and memoirists Julia Kelly and Caitríona Lally, exploring the evolving landscape of women's life writing, the relationship between memory and identity, and the enduring importance of telling one's own story.

JULIA KELLY is an acclaimed Irish memoirist and novelist. Her previous books include Matchstick Man (2018), The Playground (2014) and With My Lazy Eye (2009), for which she was awarded an Irish Book Award and nominated for a Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and Irish Book of the Decade.

CAITRÍONA LALLY is the recipient of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature (2018) and a Lannan Fellowship for Fiction (2019). In October 2021, she was announced as the inaugural Rooney Writer Fellow at Trinity Long Room Hub. Her first novel, Eggshells, was published in the US by Melville House (2017) and in the UK by Borough Press (2018). Caitríona lives in Dublin and divides her time between her young children, writing and working in the housekeeping department at Trinity College Dublin. Her second novel, Wunderland, was published in 2021 by New Island Books and Home Economics is her first memoir.

AOIFE BARRY is a journalist, broadcaster and writer living in Dublin. She is a former assistant news editor at the Journal.ie and appears frequently on national radio. Her writing has featured in the journals Banshee and Thi Wurd and featured on Sunday Miscellany on RTÉ Radio. Social Capital: Life Online in the Shadow of Ireland’s Tech Boom was published by HarperCollins in 2023.

This project is supported by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature through its 2026 Small Grants Scheme.