Siobhan Dowd
Photo by Geoff Morgan
From the author:
Born of Irish parents, the youngest of four girls, I was raised in a South London suburb. Despite the red buses and red post boxes, Ireland was bred in the bone. We were brought up as Irish-Catholic, went to Catholic schools with other Irish-Catholics, and spent our magical childhood summers playing with our Irish cousins in Ireland’s County Waterford. While there, we lived in a remote cottage with no water or electricity. We washed in water collected in rain barrels and read by gaslight.
The four of us used to liken ourselves to the girls in Little Women, which meant I was the spoilt one, Amy–the short straw.
From the age of seven, I scribbled down poems, ghost stories,…