Creative Non-Fiction
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"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.”
“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
“Bold Girls: A Literary History of Wild Irish Girls,” Irish Times 9 March 2018
“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
“The fight for abortion rights in Ireland is an international cause,” Concordia Now, 23 September 2016
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.
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.
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
