“Irish Folklore Has Always Interested and Influenced Me”: An Interview with Deirdre Sullivan

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24162/EI2024-12590

Keywords:

Deirdre Sullivan, Fairy tales, Savage Her Reply, Tangleweed and Brine, “The Children of Lir”

Abstract

Deirdre Sullivan is an award-winning Irish YA writer who has been praised by several writers and folklore academics, such as Jack Zipes, for her fairy-tale revisions and her rewriting of the Irish legend “The Children of Lir”. Following the steps of contemporary feminist writers like Angela Carter or Emma Donoghue, Sullivan gives voice to minorities and deals with silenced topics such as sexual harassment. This interview focuses on her subversions of fairy tales and Irish mythology, especially in her collection Tangleweed and Brine (2017) and her revision of “The Children of Lir” in Savage Her Reply (2020). In this interview, Deirdre Sullivan talks about her interest in fairy tales and Irish folklore and how she became a writer.

Author Biography

Diana Rodríguez Bonet 

Diana Rodríguez Bonet was born in 1991 in Lleida (Spain). After graduating in English Studies at the University of Lleida in 2014 and having spent six months at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) with an ERASMUS grant, she enrolled in an international Physics studies programme (IPSP) at the University of Leipzig (Germany). Then, after finishing her second bachelor’s degree in 2017, she enrolled in two master’s programmes at the university of Granada (Spain). By mid 2019 she finished a master in English Literature and Linguistics, where she had the pleasure of working with Dr. Pilar Villar Argáiz as her thesis supervisor, and another in Physics. Subsequently, she joined the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Lleida in September 2019 as an Assistant Lecturer and started her PhD on Deirdre Sullivan under the supervision of Dr. Villar Argáiz while also working as a teacher for the Catalan Department of Education.

References

Bacchilega, Cristina (2013). Fairy Tales Transformed?: 21st Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Rodríguez Bonet, Diana (2022). “Feminist Rewritings of Fairy Tales in Ireland: A Case Study of Deirdre Sullivan.” Études irlandaises, 47 (2): 41-55. https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesirlandaises.13253

Sarti, Luca (2023). “Dealing with Domestic Violence and Child Sexual Abuse in Deirdre Sullivan’s Needlework.” Voices From the Wreckage: Young Adult Voices in the #MeToo Movement, edited by Kimberly Karshner. Delaware: Vernon Press. 145-64.

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Published

2024-03-17

How to Cite

Rodríguez Bonet , D. (2024). “Irish Folklore Has Always Interested and Influenced Me”: An Interview with Deirdre Sullivan. Estudios Irlandeses, 19(1), 197–206. https://doi.org/10.24162/EI2024-12590

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 1 (2024): Issue 19 – 2024

Section

Interviews

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Diana Rodríguez Bonet 

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/