Claire Fullerton's Blog (30)

Book Review: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

As it appears in the New York Journal of…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on January 12, 2022 at 11:30am — No Comments

'Truth Within the Fiction': Q&A With Author Billy O'Callaghan

When one writer encounters another that blindsides them with staggering awe, the inclination is to rush out and spread the joy with those who love the written word. I feel this way about Billy O'Callaghan and extend deepest gratitude to Gerry Regan and Joe Gannon for allowing me to share this…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on November 28, 2017 at 11:30am — No Comments

Book Review: 'Girl on the Leeside' by Kathleen Anne Kenney

Because I once lived in a small town in Connemara, at the gateway of the Irish-speaking area called the Gaeltacht, I look for those novels that depict the region as it is, for once one has spent significant time there, its ways and means register in the soul with perpetual resonance, leaving one forever nostalgic for…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on July 9, 2017 at 1:00pm — 8 Comments

Book Review: 'The Dead House' by Billy O'Callaghan

I’ve been following author Billy O’Callaghan’s career with rapt enthusiasm, since I fortuitously came across him online, last year. That he is Irish caught my attention, and as I delved further, I discovered he is the author of three short story collections, all of which I’ve read, all of which, to me, are in their own…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on June 21, 2017 at 10:30am — 7 Comments

Book Review: 'The Stolen Child' by Lisa Carey

Because I once lived on the western coast of Ireland, and because author Lisa Carey moved to the island of Inishbofin, off Ireland's west coast to research her first book, I've been following her career for many years. I've loved each of her four Irish-themed novels, and eagerly awaited the February 7th release of her latest, "The…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on February 25, 2017 at 6:00pm — 12 Comments

The Man from Derry

His name was Eoghan, and I never did catch his last name. A solid year spent with the desultory coming and going of this enigmatic man through the door of The Galway Music Center, and I came to accept him as Kieran’s friend from Derry. Kieran rarely explained himself, much less anyone attendant, and because he was the…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on August 30, 2016 at 12:30pm — 11 Comments

An Author's Gratitude to The Wild Geese Community

In Louisiana, they use the phonetically pleasing word lagniappe to denote a little something extra. Typically, a lagniappe is a small gift given with a purchase to a customer, by way of compliment or for good measure as a way of saying thank you. I’ve been so enamored with this word that it’s found its way into my…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on July 5, 2016 at 11:00am — 8 Comments

Taken Into an Irish Confidence

This Irish vignette has stayed with me throughout the years, the way poignant moments tend to do. It was only a moment, really, yet even at the time I could have told you of its impact; there was something about sitting in Seamus O’Flaherty’s porch on the coast road in Inverin that made me think I’d truly arrived in…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on June 8, 2016 at 6:00pm — 21 Comments

The Journey

I’m partial to the west coast of Ireland for its myriad wonders, which appear in small towns that are hidden like gemstones in neat grids of logic separated by rambling, idle roads. There are worlds within worlds in these Irish small towns: history and lineage and myth and folklore, meaning so resonate and full of…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on May 16, 2016 at 6:00pm — 7 Comments

Altan -- Projecting Irish Bonhomie To The World

Carmel, California -- Before I get to the acclaimed Irish traditional musicians from Donegal who comprise the band, Altan, I’m going to editorialize to put the show I saw the other night into context. When I lived on the western coast of Ireland, it fascinated me to realize that in the…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on April 1, 2016 at 10:00am — 2 Comments

The Thing About Galway

Even on the best of days, when the weather is temperate and the sky soft and cloudless, Galway City has a worn, secondhand feel to it: an historic, pensive, erudite quality everywhere you roam down its serpentine streets. But there’s also an energetic undercurrent to Galway that seems to thrive on the idea of opposites,…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on March 16, 2016 at 12:00pm — 21 Comments

'The Wolf and the Shield' -- What Does Your Heart Hunt For?



“The Wolf and the Shield: An Adventure with Saint Patrick” by Sherry Weaver Smith, reads like a heartwarming parable. Although it is ostensibly a children’s story, ideal for ages seven through twelve, this lovely book hit all the requisite high notes to hold my rapt attention: that it is set in…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on March 3, 2016 at 4:00pm — 3 Comments

The Goat

Her name was Gray, which I found fitting because her eyes were that stormy blue-gray you seldom see, and when the sky was overcast, you had to squint to bring what little blue they had into focus. She had an arresting face and a delicate manner, but she dressed with neither forethought or self-awareness, usually…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on February 17, 2016 at 11:30am — 2 Comments

The Sessiun

It was nine o’clock on a Sunday night when Johnny Og came to collect me, and it was raining—not one of those misty, soft rains, as is often the case on the west coast of Ireland, but one of those howling, unforgiving, relentless downpours that comes from no discernable direction, save for the threatening sky overhead.…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on February 2, 2016 at 10:30am — 4 Comments

A Banter That Sings



The streets of Galway were gray that night. Everywhere I looked, gray buildings, gray sidewalks, gray sky, beneath a mist that floated inward from the Atlantic and hovered ominously, casting contrasting coronas of light upon the sidewalk from the interior lights of the handful of pubs still open in the midnight hour. Our…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on January 12, 2016 at 5:30pm — 19 Comments

Wake Me in South Galway by Richard Tillinghast

By Richard Tillinghast b. 1940…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on January 2, 2016 at 8:00pm — No Comments

Reconnecting with Kieran



After more years than I care to count, Kieran has resurfaced. The last time I saw him, it was raining; it was one of those gray Galway days on New Castle Road, and I’d sleuthed Kieran out, after swearing to Adrian I’d never tell who had told me where I…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on December 3, 2015 at 9:00am — 8 Comments

On the Road of an Irish Graveyard

Dean Mulroy is the kind of guy who needs room to roam and access to the stars, which is why he lived way back in the bog behind the house I rented in Inverin. Only a certain kind of guy would want to live as he did. At the time, he was unimpressed with technological conveniences, including a telephone, and the first…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on November 14, 2015 at 11:00am — 39 Comments

On an Irish Bus

He would have stood out anywhere, and standing in front of the entrance to a boutique hotel in Spiddal, wielding a black walking cane with an ivory handle two paces before him made him glaringly incongruous to everything I’d come to know about the western coast of Ireland. He wore a three-piece suit on his…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on October 25, 2015 at 2:30pm — 11 Comments

Ireland and My Grandmother's Faith

My father’s mother was named Helen Ford. She was long and lithe, narrow and fluid, and gifted with a full head of wavy hair that turned, in her later years, to a color that by-passed gray completely to shine an enviable white. Her family hailed from Tuam, County Galway, and as I write, I’m glancing up at the…

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Added by Claire Fullerton on October 2, 2015 at 7:00pm — 27 Comments

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