Beginner’s Pluck

Mary Costello

Writing didn’t come onto Mary’s radar until she was 22. “I was a primary school teacher. I was happy, but I went through a period of insomnia. One night I realised what was wrong. I wanted to write.” Mary joined a local creative writing class, and the following year she went to Listowel Writer’s Week. “That opened up a whole new world,” she says. “I discovered the short story, and started reading American writers.”

Her first two stories were published in New Irish Writing. Then she married — it lasted ten years — and the writing waned. “I had a love/hate relationship with writing. I wanted to give it up, but it kept pulling at me.”