DNLF Writer in Residence Vona Groarke & Kit De Waal in conversation with Paula Shields
Kit De Waal & Vona Groarke have written about their own lives in fiction & poetry and in non-fiction. In this event the two writers will discuss their memoirs, poetry, fiction and essay with Paula Shields. Vona Groarke’s recent book about her great-grandmother, Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O’Hara – is a poetic account of Irish women domestic servants in 1890s New York. Vona is also writer in residence at St John’s College, Cambridge. Her most recent of eight poetry collections is Link: Poet and World.
Kit de Waal, born to an Irish mother and Caribbean father, was brought up among the Irish community of Birmingham in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Her memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes was published in August 2022. Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017. .An anthology of working-class memoir, Common People was crowdfunded and edited by Kit in 2019.