“Loss is what feeds narrative”: Claire Keegan in conversation with Declan Kiberd

Declan Kiberd, Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies and professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, spoke with author Claire Keegan about her life and writing at O’Connell House on March 23, 2023. This special 25th Anniversary event emphasizes the Dublin Global Gateway’s commitment to literature as a central expression of Irish identity.

Claire Keegan is an award winning writer of short stories and novellas hailing from County Wicklow. Her writing career spans three decades in which she has published four major works, and though her output is sparing, each piece is lauded as some of the finest contemporary stories written in the English language.

“Claire Keegan is a globally significant author,” says Kevin Whelan, Michael Smurfit Director of the Notre Dame Dublin Global Gateway. “Her novels and short stories are hugely admired for both their technical sophistication and their powerful emotional heft.”

After the success of short story collections Antarctica (1999) and Walk the Blue Fields (2007), Keegan was awarded the inaugural William Trevor Prize and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. She went on to write her first novella, Foster (2010), originally published as a short story in the New Yorker and later published in longer form by Faber and Faber. Foster won the Davy Byrnes Award, was selected by the Department of Education as text for the Irish Leaving Certificate exams, and, most recently, was adapted into the Oscar-nominated Irish language film An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl) in 2022.

Her newest novel, Small Things Like These (2021), won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and is currently in film production with actors Cillian Murphy, Emily Watson, and Ciarán Hinds.

“It is a very spiritual book,” remarked Dr. Noreen Doody, senior lecturer in English Literature at Dublin City University, on the night. “It is such a still book, and yet, nature is moving all the time.”

This subtle personification of the natural world in Small Things Like These was inspired by long walks in the West of Ireland during covid lockdowns, “too much wine, and too much time on my hands,” she jokes. Keegan says she believes in a boundless consciousness of nature, manifesting in a shared intelligence between humans, animals, and nature.

Keegan’s natural spirituality can be traced back to a quiet, happy childhood on her family’s farm in County Wicklow, the eldest of six children in a “big Catholic family.” Outside of writing, she trains horses and will spend the next six months in Australia taming wild horses. “You can learn to read a horse in the same way you read a text,” she says.

Keegan bats down any perceived anti-Catholic sentiment in her stories. “Any criticism of the Catholic Church comes from a true and deep regard for Christianity and spirituality,” she says, confirming her criticism is that of institution, including the Irish state or the family, and those who are flogged, failed, and forgotten in such environments.

When asked about her method and her surgical precision in storytelling, she says her characters come to her first in silence, and their stories always find their natural conclusion. “No one ever says they like the middle of a story,” she laughs. “It’s always about the beginning or the end. I write ‘middles;’ the beginning and the end happen naturally.”

Keegan sees the purpose of her work as an opportunity to “give the mic to someone who is hurting.”

“Silence is really appealing to me, and loss is what feeds narrative,” she remarks. “The people who aren’t able to talk are the ones who are hurting the most. That’s why short stories stay short.”