American writer Richard Ford, who selected Foster as winner of the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award 2009, wrote in the winning citation of Keegan’s ‘thrilling’ instinct for the right words and her ‘patient attention to life’s vast consequence and finality’. September 2010 brought the publication of the ‘long, short story’ Foster. Her second collection of stories, Walk the Blue Fields, was published in 2007. Keegan’s first collection of short stories was Antarctica (1999). She returned to Ireland in 1992 and later lived for a year in Cardiff, Wales, where she undertook an MA in creative writing and taught undergraduates at the University of Wales. Keegan travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana when she was seventeen and studied English and Political Science at Loyola University. Trust your own judgement and use or discard the following notes as you judge them to be useful (or not) to you in your comparing and contrasting this text with at least two others from the suggested list given to you by your teacher.Īll page references are from the beautifully produced Faber and Faber paperback edition About Claire Keeganīorn in County Wicklow in 1968, she is the youngest of a large family. Your first task is to read the short story/novella (all 88 pages!) and begin to form your own opinion as to what is happening in the story. More than likely you will be studying this text as part of your Comparative Studies module for Leaving Cert English Higher Level.

To work on the level of suggestion is what I aim for in all my writing.” “It’s essentially about trusting in the reader’s intelligence rather than labouring a point. In one of her many interviews after the publication of ‘Foster’ in 2010, Claire Keegan challenged her would-be readers: The cover photo was given to Claire Keegan by Madelaine Greene, wife of John McGahern.

Books by claire keegan