Life
1941- ; b. Cork; ed. South Presentation Convent and Miss O’Sullivan’s
private school; joined Cork Examiner; wrote ‘colourful stories’
for Donal Foley, Irish Times; stories in David Marcus, Irish Writing
(Irish Press); "displaced Persons" won Listowel prize;
received Arts Council Bursary and wrote celebrated first novel, The Killeen
(1985), deals with the struggles of two woman connected with political
men in 1930s, their children’s deaths and burials in graves for unbaptised;
The Little Galloway Girls (1987); other, 1990, worked on Approaching
Priests (1991); contribs to Sunday Independent, Irish Times,
and Sunday Tribune. DIW ATT OCIL
Works
All Of Us There (1983); The Killeen (London: Hamish Hamilton
1985); The Little Galloway Girls (London: Black Swan 1987); Approaching
Priests (London: Sinclair Stevenson 1991).
Notes
James Calahan, The Irish Novel: A Critical History (Boston: Twayne
Publishers 1988), Leland shows how women and children have suffered as
victims of the romanticised male Irish pol. struggles of past and present’
[Cahalan].
Brian Cleeve & Ann Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin:
Lilliput 1985), calls her a journalist with Cork Examiner and Irish
Times..
Ann Owens Weekes, Attic Guide to Published Works of Irish Women Literary
Writers (Dublin: Attic Press 1994), [biog. as above; offers lengthy
summary of Killeen, set in Cork in the era of de Valera’s
government, concerns Julia’s resistance to and escape from political
extremism, expressed in her husband Maurice’s imprisonment and determination
to bring up his children as ‘intellectual and military activists’.
The killeen is a lonely churchyard to which the church consigns unbaptised
babies.
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)