top of page

Creative Non-Fiction

WP6_Cover_web_0.5x (1).png

"A Quickening in the Stillness," Winter Papers 6, 2020

"Uncertainty has settled on me like snow, quiet and intractable, its secrets buried like seeds in the cold earth. I know about snow. I lived in Canada for eight years. I know its brute implacability, its resistance to a desire for change, until, when the time is right, it melts and reveals the stunned grass beneath."

"Dash the Imagination Against Something Hard," The Puritan, Issue 46: Summer 2019

“I am an academic trying to retrain my hand and my head. I am trying to trick myself into creativity, to let my hand loosen, my head open. Instead of stalking an idea with ruthless determination through a landscape of books, notes, and arguments, I sit remembering what my childhood might have taught me about writing.”

Screenshot_2020-01-08 Issue 46 Summer 2019 The Puritan.png
abbey image large.jpg

“Susan Cahill recently became the first woman to give a firsthand account of abortion on the Abbey Stage as part of the Repeal the Eight campaign. She later penned a moving and candid account of her experience for the Irish Times, which we consider required reading.”

Her.ie, “Women You Should Know: Female Game-Changers In Ireland

Newspaper Articles & Blog Posts

“Trust Women, Listen to Women: Waking the Feminists, Repeal the Eighth, and the Politics of Storytelling,” University Times 15 March 2018

Roald Dahl’s ‘unique, vibrant and subversive’ voice,” Concordia Now, 11 September 2017

Academic Books

Irish Literature in the Celtic Tiger Years 1990 to 2008: Gender, Bodies, Memory

(Continuum, 2011)

When Irish culture and economics underwent rapid changes during the Celtic Tiger Years, Anne Enright, Colum McCann and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne began writing. Now that period of Irish history has closed, this study uncovers how their writing captured that unique historical moment.

9780567533821.jpeg

Anne Enright

Eds. Claire Bracken and Susan Cahill

(Irish Academic Press, 2011)

Anne Enright, one of the most exciting writers in the world, displays a capability to be remarkably funny while engaging with serious subject matter. This is the first book in which scholars examine her work.

Anne-Enright.jpeg

This Side of Brightness: Essays on the Fiction of Colum McCann

Eds. Susan Cahill and Eoin Flannery

(Peter Lang, 2012)

Colum McCann is one of the most important Irish writers in contemporary literary fiction. His work has been critically acclaimed across the globe for its artistic achievement, its thematic range and its ethical force. This Side of Brightness: Essays on the Fiction of Colum McCann is the first collection of scholarly essays to deal with McCann’s œuvre, drawing on the pioneering critical work of some of the leading figures in Irish literary studies. Touching on a host of central themes in McCann’s writing – emigration, race, performance, poverty, travel, nationality and globalization – the volume covers each of McCann’s publications and includes a substantial interview with the author. The book is an invaluable resource for current and future scholars of the Irish novel

9783035303629.jpeg

Journal Special Issue

Guest Editor (with Emma Hegarty and Emilie Morin) of Waste and Abundance: The Measure of Consumption, Special Issue of SubStance 37. 2 (Issue 116)

Journal Articles

“A Girl is a Half-formed Thing?: Girlhood, Trauma, and Resistance in Post-Tiger Irish Literature”. LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 28.2, 2017, pp. 153-171

“Through the Looking Glass: Fairytale cinema and the spectacle of femininity in Stardust and The Brothers Grimm”. Marvels & Tales 24.1, 2010, pp. 57-67

“Foreword: Waste and Abundance: The Measure of Consumption” with Emma Hegarty and Emilie Morin. Waste and Abundance: The Measure of Consumption, Special Issue of SubStance 37.2 (Issue 116), 2008, pp. 3-7.

“Corporeal Architecture: Body and City in Colum McCann’s This Side of Brightness”. Etudes Irlandaises 32.1, 2007, pp. 43-58.

Book Chapters

“Killers, Lovers, and Kids: Contemporary Genre Fiction.” The New Irish Studies: Twenty-First Century Critical Revisions. Ed. Paige Reynolds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020

“Post-Millennial Fiction in the Republic.” The Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction. Ed. Liam Harte. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020

“That is No Country for Young Girls: Irish Girlhood in the Revolutionary Period.” Constructions of the Irish Child in the Independence Period, 1910-1940. Eds. Ciara Boylan and Ciara Gallagher. Palgrave: 2018, pp. 165-186, 2018

“Celtic-Tiger Fiction.” A History of Modern Irish Women’s Literature. Eds. Clíona Ó Gallchoir and Heather Ingman. Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press, pp. 426-444, 2018

“Where Are the Irish Girls?: Girlhood, Irishness and L.T. Meade”. Girlhood Studies and the Politics of Place: Contemporary Paradigms for Research. Eds. Claudia Mitchell and Carrie Rentschler. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 212-227, 2016

“Making Space for the Irish Girl: Rosa Mulholland and Irish Girls in Fiction at the Turn of the Century”. Colonial Girlhood in Literature, Culture and History, 1840-1950. Eds. Kristine Moruzi and Michelle J. Smith. Palgrave, pp. 167-179, 2014

“‘Far away from the busy world’: Máirín Cregan’s Children’s Literature”. The Country of the Young: Interpretations of Youth and Childhood in Irish Culture. Eds. John Countryman and Kelly Matthews. Dublin: Four Courts Press, pp. 70-85, 2013

“Choreographing Memory: The Dancing Body and Temporality in Dancer”. This Side of Brightness: Essays on the Fiction of Colum McCann. Eds. Susan Cahill and Eóin Flannery. Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 75-102, 2012

“Introduction” with Eóin Flannery. This Side of Brightness: Essays on the Fiction of Colum McCann. Eds. Susan Cahill and Eóin Flannery. Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 1-8, 2012

“‘Cleaning up the mess?’: The Child and Nation in Historical Fiction set between 1890 and 1922”. Irish Children’s Literature and Culture: New Perspectives on Contemporary Writing. Eds. Valerie Coghlan and Keith O’Sullivan. London: Routledge, pp. 41-54, 2011

“‘Dreaming of upholstered breasts’, or, how to find your way back home: dislocation in What Are You Like?Anne Enright. Eds. Claire Bracken and Susan Cahill. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, pp. 87-106, 2011

“Introduction” with Claire Bracken. Anne Enright. Eds. Claire Bracken and Susan Cahill. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, pp. 1-12, 2011

“Interview with Anne Enright, August 2009” with Claire Bracken, Anne Enright. Eds. Claire Bracken and Susan Cahill. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, pp. 13-32, 2011

“‘The “Other” that Moves and Misleads’: Mapping and Temporality in Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s The Dancers DancingLiminal Borderlands: Ireland Past, Present, Future, edited by Irene Gilsenan Nordin and Elin Holmsten. Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 69-83, 2009

“‘A Greedy Girl’ and ‘A National Thing’: Gender and History in Anne Enright’s The Pleasure of Eliza LynchIrish Literature: Feminist Perspectives. Eds. Patricia Coughlan and Tina O’Toole. Dublin: Carysfort Press, pp. 203-222, 2008

“Doubles and Dislocations: The Body and Place in Anne Enright’s What Are You Like?Global Ireland: Irish Literatures for the New Millennium. Eds. Ondrej Pilný and Clare Wallace. Prague: Litteraria Pragrnsia, pp. 133-44, 2005

bottom of page